Psychological and philosophical war film based on the book The Dark Room of Damocles (1958) by Dutch author W.F. Hermans, who wrote the scenario himself.
During the war, a tobacconist blindly obeys a resistance fighter - his spitting image - whose existence nobody believes in after the war. The film casts doubt on the post-war classification in right and wrong, just like the later screen version of De aanslag (1986), which won the first Dutch feature film Oscar. The film was nominated for a Golden Palm at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. For many years, the adaptation of W. F. Hermans' De donkere kamer van Damocles was banned by order of financier Freddy Heineken.
In 2007, The Spitting Image was admitted to the "Canon van de Nederlandse Film", a list of the most important Dutch films.
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