@article{article_1858261, title={Through the window: Reflections of Calvinist ethics Amsterdam’s architecture on cinema}, journal={ARTS: Artuklu Sanat ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi}, pages={151–172}, year={2026}, DOI={10.46372/arts.1858261}, url={https://izlik.org/JA39NR23AW}, author={Göker, Doğuşcan}, keywords={cinema, amsterdam, architecture, windows, calvinist ethos}, abstract={This study explores how Calvinist Protestant ethics and cultural history have shaped Amsterdam’s architectural character, using cinema as a critical lens. The city’s seventeenth-century canal houses, with their large, often uncurtained windows, are approached as everyday spaces where moral ideals become visible. Rather than treating this architectural feature as a stylistic choice, the article draws on Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to interpret transparency as a sign of discipline, self control, and social accountability. Through close readings of films such as Paul Verhoeven’s Business is Business and Turkish Delight, Dick Maas’ Amsterdamned, Joram Lürsen’s Public Works, and Robert Jan Westdijk’s Little Sister, the study examines how windows, façades, and interiors function as metaphors of visibility and concealment. These films reveal Amsterdam as a city suspended between virtue and excess, surveillance and intimacy. Combining architectural history, cultural analysis, and film studies, the article highlights the moral and visual tensions embedded in Amsterdam’s urban imagination.}, number={15}