The Firemen's Ball

The documentary feel of 1967's THE FIREMEN'S BALL comes largely from its cast of non-actors, many of whom were in fact actual firemen in a rural town in Czechoslovakia.  Writer/director Milos Forman's first motion picture filmed in color is about the disastrous titular event, as well as some of the before and after.  All of it serves to make prickly barbs at politics and the collectives who engage in them, perhaps mainly those of Communists, though maybe not limited to such.  In the late '60s, the Soviets had invaded Forman's country.   They were outraged by his film and had it "banned forever".

The director denies any specific agenda or targets with his film, though was not opposed to interpretations that caused such a banishment.  The movie is set over the course of one day, as a volunteer fire department organize and execute (that is truly the appropriate word) a ball for the elderly departing chairman, with a concurrent raffle and beauty pageant.  Everything goes wrong from the outset, starting with the accidental burning of the large banner to be hung over the hall.  Then the raffle prizes keep disappearing.  Attempts to find pageant contestants is a challenge. Some rather homely women reluctantly agree, then decide to barricade themselves in the washroom.   A man is ejected into the snow.  A fire breaks out in a large house across town.  The firemen save the owner and his furniture, but nothing else.  Everyone from the ball comes to watch.  No one had paid for their libations.

THE FIREMEN'S BALL, to me slightly overrated but still a gem, is billed as a comedy, and is often quite funny.  Sometimes in a Marx Brothers or even Monty Pythonesque manner, but mostly in a hushed knowing guffaw, a recognizance of committee follies, of old regime/new regime machinations.  This is some wicked satire.  Scalding at times, quieter at others.  Viewers not familiar with Eastern bloc politics or the subtle humor of European cinema may have some rough going, even with a seventy three minute run time.  Forman's direction is on target and creative.

In this movie's allegories, there are no violent uprisings or coups, no fierce iron fists.  But rather Forman and Ivan Passer (with Jaroslav Papousek) sharpen the quills on social ills and faux pas. How democratic and socialistic ideologies do not co-exist.  A late in the film discussion among the firefighters really lays it all out, though the presentation of their gift to the guest of honor and the very last scene only serve to top it.