Runtime: 73 minutes
Directed by: The late Milos Forman
Starring: Jan Vostrcil, Josef Sebanek, Josef Valnoha, Frantisek Debelka, Jan Stockl
From: Several Czech & Italian companies... and also French directors like Godard and Truffaut, who stepped in when controversy happened and the release was going to be cancelled
This is a movie with an interesting story behind it:
Yes, it's a little late for me to pay tribute to the late Milos
Forman considering he passed away two full months ago, but at least I
have finally corrected this error. In addition, While he did not make
that many films in his life, I've still only seen a small amount of his
filmography and this is the first to be reviewed here; shame on me. As
this was on Amazon Prime and was a quick watch at 73 minutes, it was an
easy choice for me.
Plus, this was the last film Forman made in his native Czechoslovakia; as this was seen as a satire against Communism in Eastern Europe, the reception there was what you'd expect for a country that had been Communist for almost 2 full decades by that point. There was also much strife going on in Czechoslovakia; I'll spare the details but he thought it was a wise idea to emigrate to the West. Firemen in the country were also not too pleased with how they were portrayed in the movie but it pales in comparison to having your birthplace ban the film, as what happened here.
A volunteer fire department in a small Czech town hold an annual town ball and they are to honor their old former chairman by giving him a gift. The night is a catastrophe, where people steal gifts, the planned beauty pageant is a fiasco and other unexpected moments occur; throughout all that, it's mainly old Czech man arguing with each other and even the simplest tasks become needlessly complex & drawn out. It's absurd, which makes the humor work here as I laughed at how things quickly turned out to be a disaster; pretty impressive for a film where there were only two trained actors and the rest were the natives of the small town they lived in.
The potshots at Communism are obvious, if I haven't expressed it clearly enough already. An old man's house burns down and the main concern with some people was not only sitting him close to the fire so he could be warm, but trying to face him away so he couldn't see the fire. All that plus some slapstick makes up the laughs this picture has and I usually was pretty amused, thus the high rating.
Plus, this was the last film Forman made in his native Czechoslovakia; as this was seen as a satire against Communism in Eastern Europe, the reception there was what you'd expect for a country that had been Communist for almost 2 full decades by that point. There was also much strife going on in Czechoslovakia; I'll spare the details but he thought it was a wise idea to emigrate to the West. Firemen in the country were also not too pleased with how they were portrayed in the movie but it pales in comparison to having your birthplace ban the film, as what happened here.
A volunteer fire department in a small Czech town hold an annual town ball and they are to honor their old former chairman by giving him a gift. The night is a catastrophe, where people steal gifts, the planned beauty pageant is a fiasco and other unexpected moments occur; throughout all that, it's mainly old Czech man arguing with each other and even the simplest tasks become needlessly complex & drawn out. It's absurd, which makes the humor work here as I laughed at how things quickly turned out to be a disaster; pretty impressive for a film where there were only two trained actors and the rest were the natives of the small town they lived in.
The potshots at Communism are obvious, if I haven't expressed it clearly enough already. An old man's house burns down and the main concern with some people was not only sitting him close to the fire so he could be warm, but trying to face him away so he couldn't see the fire. All that plus some slapstick makes up the laughs this picture has and I usually was pretty amused, thus the high rating.
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