“Forman’s true mastery is that wherever or whenever he points his camera, he sees deeply into the human soul.” Scott Foundas, LA Weekly
This summer, Cornell Cinema presents two early films by Czech master Milos Forman: Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball. Best known in this country for films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, and The People vs. Larry Flynt, Forman cut his cinematic teeth in 1960s Czechoslovakia, and was an integral part of the Czech New Wave. Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball were hugely popular at the time of their American debuts (1966 and 1968, respectively), and helped to usher in a new era of enthusiasm and appreciation of foreign and art-house cinema in the US. Both films were regulars on the art-house circuit into the 1980s, but fell out of distribution after that, only recently becoming available again thanks to Janus Films, the company that introduced American audiences to the films of Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Kurosawa, and Truffaut among many others. New prints of the two Forman classics are now available for the enjoyment of contemporary audiences.
In the tradition of the Czech New Wave, Loves of a Blonde deals irreverently and comically with love and the state of Czechoslovak society with dark and absurd humor, and the casting of non-professional actors. After a night of romance with a visiting piano player, a young, blonde woman falls hopelessly in love, and follows her new beau to his home, not knowing that he still lives with his parents. When she arrives, the house is thrown into confusion and chaos, as the young man’s parents attempt to understand exactly what is going on. Through the obvious generational gaps and misunderstandings, Forman highlights the youthful folly of chasing love and romance, as if they are things that can be caught.
The Firemen’s Ball also proves to be a hilarious satire of not just Czech society, but humanity in general. The film chronicles a gala thrown for a senior member of the fire brigade. The focus is not on the guest of honor, however, but on the other guests at the party, as they drink, steal, lie, and copulate underneath dinner tables. But as one looks past the firemen as the subject of the film, one sees “the movie is about mortal stupidity as much as anything—all these people, whose life work is preserving life, failing each other through insensitivity and selfishness.” (NY Times) In fact, when the film was first released in Czechoslovakia in 1967, over 40,000 firefighters did not get the joke, and resigned in protest (the film was later banned in the country, and the firefighters went back to work). Here, and in Loves of a Blonde, Forman finds his talent for telling charming stories with much wider, humanistic implications.