As a tribute to the great director Miloš Forman, who just died at age 86, this week’s video pick is Forman’s 1967 Czech comedy The Firemen’s Ball. Forman came of age in Communist Czechoslovakia, and the prevalent thread in his films was the challenging, even mocking, of authority. That’s what The Firemen’s Ball is all about.
It’s a comedy of errors set during the annual ball of a small town fire brigade. It’s an obligatory occasion, and everyone is just going through the motions. No one is willing or able to do what they are supposed to be doing, whether it is protecting the raffle prizes or even putting out fires. The film eviscerated the moral bankruptcy of the Communist society.
The bumbling old farts on the ball committee try to put on a beauty contest, and they shanghai a bunch of young women in attendance and parade them around the committee room to prep them for the pageant. The Wife was offended by the sexism of the scene, but she didn’t stick around to see the committee get their comeuppance when the contestants themselves blow up the Big Announcement and turn the committee members into objects of ridicule. Stick with it – the whole movie is only 73 minutes long.
In his youth, Forman lived through the Nazis, who he described as evil, and the Communists, who he described as absurd. Indeed, the Czech ruling Politburo did recognizer themselves in The Firemen’s Ball’s bumbling firemen’s ball committee, and they concocted a pretext to ban the film in Czechoslovakia.
The Firemen’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Fireman’s Ball) can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix. It’s only one hour, thirteen minutes long, and it’s a hoot.
