Milos Forman

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE FIREMEN’S BALL

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THE FIREMEN’S BALL

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.

THE FIREMEN’S BALL

Remembering Miloš Forman

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Miloš Forman. Photo: Robert Clark/Courtesy of LA Times.

The great director Miloš Forman has died at age 86.  Forman directed only 14 features over his forty-year career, but four are masterpieces or near-masterpieces – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, The People vs Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon.  That’s a remarkable batting average, especially when you add in such fine Forman films as Hair, Ragtime and Valmont.

Forman came of age in Communist Czechoslovakia, and the prevalent thread in his films was the challenging, even mocking, of authority.  There’s no better example than Nurse Rached in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Nurse Rached is every bit the tyrant as any jack-booted fascist dictator, but Forman chose to have little-known actress Louise Fletcher play Rached as soft-spoken, always-composed and superficially benevolent, which made Nurse Rached’s fiats even more emasculating an soul-crushing.  Fletcher won an Oscar for her performance.

In Amadeus, Jeffrey Jones’ performance as the all-powerful but dim Emperor Joseph II punctured the idea of the divine right of kings.  And, of course, Forman also made movies about Andy Kaufman and Larry Flynt, two outsiders who reveled in defying conventions.

Forman was also a master of casting.  Not any director would have thought of casting Fletcher and Will Sampson in Cuckoo’s Nest or  Jones, F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce in Amadeus.   Not to mention Woody Harrelson in The People vs Larry Flynt.  All turned out to be inspired choices.

I particularly love Forman’s final Czech movie before coming to Hollywood, The Fireman’s Ball from 1967.  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 and was predictably suppressed by the regime.

The Fireman’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Firemen’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.

THE FIREMEN’S BALL