Watch these Five Early Masterpieces in Memory of Miloš Forman
Loves of a Blonde will open the 2018 Karlovy Vary international film festival (June 29-July 7). In homage to Milos Forman, the Czech National symphony orchestra will perform music from Fireman’s Ball, Taking Off, Hair, and Amadeus.
“For a people endowed with a tradition of humor, the greater the danger, the deeper the laugh. Humor, even gallows humor, becomes indispensable to keep one’s sanity…” — Milos Forman
In honor of Miloš Forman, who passed away last month, and in anticipation of imminent celebrations and retrospectives, let’s look back at four of his Czech films and his first American film, which he called his last Czech film in America.
In these five films, Forman finds poetry and humor in hopeless situations. He satirizes the bureaucratic morass and the generational divide. In each film, we find examples of Forman’s ability to make absurd situations out of social conflicts.
Faced with tragedy or boredom, we’re given a moment of imagination and revolt. Forman’s heroes and heroines, uneasy in the world, interrupt its flow. They revel in absurdity and flash with life.
Forman wrote and built his films in the editing room. The Czech films feel looser than his later films. They have the ability to stand still. They are more bare and visual. His great American films master a symphonic, escalated pacing, calibrated to the arcs and codas of a Hollywood narrative. But the Czech films show other possibilities for freedom.
1. Audition (1963)
In his first film, Forman anchors his spontaneous, humanist style in music and laughter.
Two short films make up the 44 minute mock-documentary Audition. Both shorts examine the importance of music in the burgeoning sixties youth culture. In the first half, we watch a small-town brass band rehearse under a tyrannical leader. Two amateur musicians skip rehearsal to watch a motorcycle race, get fired, and find a new band. The second half follows two teenage girls as they audition at the Semafor Theatre in Prague…with hundreds of other hopefuls.
Forman uses non-professional actors throughout. All the scenes, though they feel real, are staged. Audition sets the tone for Forman’s next films, in which youth, live music, and dancing are fundamental.
2. Black Peter (1963)
“ In four hours — from eight to midnight — we would have to get seven minutes of screen time on film. There were going to be no second chances.”
Forman shot his first feature, Black Peter, in cinema verité style. It’s based on an unpublished novel by Forman’s close friend Jaroslav Papousek. Teenage outsider Peter feels adrift in his own life. A handheld camera follows Peter as he scrambles through his routine. He’s ambivalent about his job at the grocery store — where he’s supposed to catch shoplifters. When he tries to chase one down, it’s his own chance to escape. For the rest of the day, he plays hooky in the countryside, frets over a girl, and discovers alcohol at a dance. A great improvised scene in the dance hall follows, using non-actors. As the camera leaves Peter to wander through the flux of preening, fighting, and dancing adolescents, each gesture and pose is real.
“The most difficult scene in ‘Black Peter’ came towards the end of the shoot, and it was a production nightmare. We needed a long scene at a dance, but didn’t have the money to hire extras. It was summer, so we decided to rent an ice rink and a band in Kolin, throw a free dance on a Saturday night, write “for free” on the door and shoot the scene with people who’d show up. In four hours — from eight to midnight — we would have to get seven minutes of screen time on film. There were going to be no second chances.” — Milos Forman
3. Loves of a Blonde (1964)
Young love. It’s several years before the bloom of Prague Spring in 1968 (and the Soviet tanks that quash it). A pretty girl drags a suitcase down an empty street.
The girl comes from a small Czechoslovakian village, where she works for a shoe factory that employs about 18 women for every man. A visiting engineer seduces her there — leaving a forwarding address. In Prague, she realizes the address doesn’t exist. Her story inspires Forman to write Loves of a Blonde.
In Loves of a Blonde, the seducer is a piano player. Young Hana Brejchova (the younger sister of Forman’s second wife, Jana Brejchova, in her first role) follows feckless musician Milda (played by Vladmir Pucholt) to his parents’ home in Prague. Once there, the boy’s mother and father do everything they can to scare her off.
The film, in black and white, is stunning. Again, nonprofessional actors fill many of the roles, including Milda’s funny mother. The postures, voices, and faces of each actor contain multitudes. Frames feel like tableaux vivants or portraits. Any still taken at random could speak for itself.
Loves works not only because it’s beautiful, but because it feels true. Self-reflective dialogues and cuts poke fun at us, the characters, or play with the frame. Finally, the film begins and ends with a song.
4. The Firemen’s Ball (1967)
A whirling dervish of a farce with Beckettian ellipses, black humor, and playful dialogues.
Calamity follows calamity at the Fireman’s Ball… The volunteer brigade hosts a celebration for their retired chief, which includes a raffle and a beauty contest. But nothing goes according to plan. A string of pearls breaks around a neck, falls through a brassiere, and clatters to the floor. Pearls roll underfoot in all directions. A couple disappears under a table. A beauty contest ends in a free-for-all. Girls lock themselves in the bathroom; boys drag other girls around the floor. An official faints while putting back the headcheese his wife stole. While an old man’s house burns to the ground, firemen swing buckets of snow and guests pour drinks. Before the night ends, all of the raffle prizes vanish… even the tiny silver hammer.
Miroslav Ondrícek’s cinematography seems to dance: its point of view changing, responsive — often humorous. The camera sweeps above then below, peeking up the dancers’ skirts. In the ballroom, each face is a story we’re allowed to linger on.
Forman’s greatest social satire feels rooted in burlesque theater. The volunteer fire brigade, wildly incompetent, is full of humanity. The one scene of real tragedy (the old man’s house burning) is laced with black humor.
Fittingly, the 1968 Cannes jury selects but never shows The Firemen’s Ball. Forman retracted his film in solidarity with the May 68 riots.
5. Taking Off (1971)
Made with Jean Claude Carrière, Taking Off was Forman’s “first American film, last Czech film.” In his new home, Forman explores the rift between the generations in the early seventies.
The beginning of Taking Off pays homage to Audition. Girls of varying talent perform folk songs in a packed rehearsal room. After each rendition, an unimpressed director shouts “Next!” There are charming disasters as well as a few great singers. (The cast includes a very young Kathy Bates and a 26-year-old Carly Simon. Later, Tina Turner performs in a nightclub.)
One night, Jeannie doesn’t come home. She goes to the audition instead. Next, we follow the runaway suburban teenager to sit-ins, sing-ins, and other hippie gatherings — while her worried parents (played by Lynn Carlin and Buck Henry) look for her. The film cuts between these two storylines. While Jeannie finds herself in New York, her father attempts hypnosis. Before long, her parents meet other parents of missing children. Like anxious detectives, the bourgeois suburbanites wander through an upside down world of nightclubs, bohemian cafés, and hip hangouts. In one famous scene, a psychologist teaches a group of worried parents how to smoke marijuana.
Lights on the highway, dancing bodies, and folk songs float between these parallel lives on the drift. Each generation — baby boomers and their flower children — sheds responsibility and reason. Through their search, Jeannie’s parents arrive at their own coming of age.
Music structures much of the film, which has a large component of freedom and improvisation. The acting, cinematography, and cuts are testaments to Forman’s love of theater and performance.
Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball are available through Janus Films and Criterion Collection. Taking Off is distributed by Carlotta films.
Loves of a Blonde will open the 2018 Karlovy Vary* international film festival (June 29-July 7). In homage to Milos Forman, the Czech National symphony orchestra will perform music from Fireman’s Ball, Taking Off, Hair, and Amadeus.
*Karlovy Vary also honors Austin Film Society (AFS) this year, dedicating a festival section to Texas films.
