One of the seminal films of the Czechoslovak New Wave and the film that put director Milos Forman on the map, “The Firemen’s Ball” is a smart comedy that caused an uproar upon release for its thematic focus and perceived political undertones. While Forman himself said multiple times that there was never a political intent while making the film, many influential figures at the time saw it as an attack on the communist regime of Czechoslovakia, and after the events of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Invasion of 1968 the picture was banned “forever”. There’s a lot to unpack as to why the communist governements perceived it as a threat back then, even if the filmmakers claim there was no such intention behind it; but beyond the political discussion that surrounds it, Forman’s last project in his native Czechoslovakia remains to this day a very accomplished piece of filmmaking and a very poignant satire.

The film concerns a group of volunteers of a fire department, that decide to organize a ball in honour of their former chairman, who is turning 86 and has recently been diagnosed with cancer. The ball shall have a raffle and a beauty pageant, and all is to be overseen by the firefighters themselves. Of course, once the ball gets going things start deviating from the original plan, many of the prizes of the raffle start going missing and the contestants of the beauty pageant soon refuse to cooperate in what is clearly a ruse by lustful old men.

Cinematically speaking, the film is a great achievement, it is a classic after all and one of the most important works of a whole cinematic movement. Its biggest strength probably lies in its screenplay, written by Forman and his group of collaborators. The dialogues are sharp and illustrative of the firemen’s dimwittedness and incapacity, the situations get ever more comical by the minute and each character has its own sets of quirks and silliness, though Forman is less concerned with creating fully fleshed out individuals but rather with showcasing the ineptitude of the group as a whole. The actors, the majority non professionals, do a very good job each in the roles they’re given. The film plays out somewhat theatrically, in that it is mainly dialogue driven and the acting can be somewhat overplayed at certain moments, and yet it works very well. Then there’s the satire.

Forman once said: “I didn’t want to give any special message or allegory. I wanted just to make a comedy knowing that if I’ll be real, if I’ll be true, the film will automatically reveal an allegorical sense.” According to him, he and his fellow screenwriters were having trouble coming up with a new script after the success of “Loves of a Blond” (1965), so they went to a small town in north Bohemia where they shut themselves out to write a new film. One day, after being holed up for a long time, they attended a real firemen’s ball and witnessed a catastrophical evening, which ultimately inspired them to write a totally new script to what would become the film that we know today. So with that anecdotal background we can see the reason for why Forman claims there’s no real underlying political message to the movie, yet czechoslovak and soviet authorities seem to differ.

The film is a comedy at the expense of a fire department, or at least its senior members, so in that sense it satirizes an important institution. The film presents the committee as a group of dumb, lustful, incapable old men that can’t pull off what they are aiming for, not even in its most basic form (simply presenting a homage to their chairman). Seeing it in a broader context it can be interpreted as a satirization of all institutional power, and then if you want to zoom out even more you could argue it satirizes authority and the governement. I belive that’s why it was perceived as threatening back in 1967. If common audiences were to see such a work, by which they laugh and make fun of a respected institution and its authority figures, this could extend to them seeing all authority figures in the same light. That’s what happens with authoritarianism: any form of portrayal of the ruling power that might be perceived as disfavourable is deemed unworthy, blasphemous and dangerous. Its funny really, since Forman didn’t go out to make a direct mockery of the government, yet because they perceive it to be that way and take direct action to repress it people start talking and start to see the similarities between the ruling class and the group of clueless firemen in Forman’s film. The fact that it was perceived as a threat speaks more about the czechoslovakian and later the soviet government than it does of the film and Forman himself.

During the events of August 1968, namely the Soviet invasion, Forman was in Paris trying to find international producers for the film to ease the debt and possible charges he was facing because of it (fun fact: the producers he’d eventually find were Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard). After learning of the invasion and the ban that would fall upon his film soon after, Forman decided to never return to his native country. In exile he went to the United States, where he directed timeless classics such as “One Flew Over the Cucko’s Nest” (1975) and “Amadeus” (1984), both of which won him the Best Director Oscar. Leaving Czechoslovakia was probably the best thing that could happen to his career, since he got to make a good amount of films that would be celebrated and respected til his death, which sadly happened in April of last year, and they keep on being admired afterwards. Being targeted politically because of a movie he made was probably a nightmare, but it proved ultimately to be a stepping stone in the path of becoming one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time. Still, as great as his american productions were, cinephiles around the globe should always cherish his last film in his native country: a comedy of dimwitted firemen that became one of the flag works of art of one of cinema’s most interesting movements.

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