The Firemen’s Ball

Movies to See Right Now

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Emily Blunt (left) in A QUIET PLACE

So there are about a hundred movie screens in Silicon Valley, and this weekend you can see Avengers: Infinity War on THIRTY of them. I have nothing against Avengers: Infinity War, which I do not plan to see even though I really like Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Christ Pratt, Tom Hiddleston and Robert Downey, Jr. It’s just that this latest from the Marvels franchise is taking up a third of our theater capacity. If only we could devote twenty-five screens to the Marvel movie and make room for another five movies about and for adults…I’m getting grouchy, because in the last year we’ve lost most of our art house screens with the closure of Camera 7, Camera 3 and the Bluelight, all after losing Camera 12 the year before. Still waiting for the opening of Pruneyard Dine-in Cinema…

OUT NOW
This week’s top picks:

  • A Quiet Place is as satisfyingly scary as any movie I’ve seen in a good long time. Very little gore and splatter, but plenty of thrills. I’m not a big fan of horror movies, but I enjoyed and admired this one.
  • Godard, Mon Amour is, at the same time, a tribute to the genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s early cinema and a satire on the insufferable tedium of the political dilettantism that squandered the rest of Godard’s filmmaking career.   This is a very inventive film, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist).  The more Godard films that you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the wit of Godard, Mon Amour.
  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin is still in a few theaters, and it’s worth the drive.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix (and in one Bay Area theater), this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • Thom Zimny’s excellent HBO documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher explores Elvis’ artistic journey.
  • I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

ON VIDEO
My DVD/Stream of the Week is a comedy, Miloš Forman’s bitingly satire of Communism, The Firemen’s Ball (which is also sometimes listed as The Fireman’s Ball). It can be streamed from Amazon Prime and rented on DVD from Netflix.

ON TV
On April 30, Turner Classic Movies presents the Otto Preminger masterpiece Anatomy of a Murder (1959). This movie has everything: Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of a wily lawyer, content to underachieve in the countryside, Stewart’s electrifying courtroom face-off with George C. Scott, great performances by a surly Ben Gazzara and a slutty Lee Remick, a great jazz score by Duke Ellington and a suitably cynical noir ending. That jazz score is one of the few movie soundtrack CDs that I own. The music perfectly complements the story of a murder investigation that reveals more and more ambiguity as it proceeds. Stewart’s character relaxes by dabbling in jazz piano, and Duke himself has a cameo leading a bar band in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (of all places).

James Stewart and George C. Scott tangle in ANATOMY OF A MURDER

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