The movie was directed by Milos Forman and saved from destruction by Francois Truffaut.
No professional actors. Forman used actual firemen in the actual town he was filming in.
The film takes place at a firemen’s ball.
It ends with a man’s house burning down. During the ball, we see lots of people getting drunk, dancing, acting like fools, stealing the gifts for the lottery. Every time they turn around, another gift disappears from the table. A couple has sex underneath the banquet table. A band plays. Steins of beer are everywhere. A girl’s pearl necklace comes apart as she dances with her boyfriend, and the pearls go everywhere, making other dancing couples slip and fall. The organizing committee of the firemen’s brigade decide they should have a beauty contest during the ball. So they walk around, peering into girls faces, and at their boobs – as they dance with their boyfriends – to see if they’ll “do”.
What we get here – similar to what we get with so much subversive art – is the surface of things. It appears that what you see is what you get. It is a whimsical slapstick comedy about a bunch of buffoonish firemen trying to get through their own ball. But of course – since it was made in a Communist society – in 1968 – in Czechoslovakia – it is, in actuality, much much more.
This was the film that was banned by the Politburo “forever”. Yes, they actually used the word “forever” in their pronouncement. Obviously, poking fun at the firemen’s brigade was a too-obvious poke at them and their ridiculousness and they would not allow the film to be shown. It was one line that did the trick. The line was: “I would NEVER return something I had stolen … because the good name of the fire brigade is more important to me than the truth.” The jig was up. A shitstorm ensued. The film was to be “banned forever”.
The film was rescued by Francois Truffaut, a friend of Forman’s. Truffaut knew of Forman’s predicament, so he paid the producer the money Forman owed, and also bought the rights to the film. So that Truffaut then owned it. This was its lifeline. It then was shown at the New York Film Festival and the rest is history.
Firemen’s Ball is an allegory. It was completed in Czechoslovakia just months before the Soviet crackdown that appalled the world. It was made during the more relaxed Dubcek era … and Forman paid the price.
Wonderful film. Laugh out loud funny. Innovative. Clever. And truly subversive.
We have Truffaut to thank for it being rescued. Amazing.
And Forman has made some of my favorite movies ever – but this one I had never seen.
The beauty pageant at the firemen’s ball, its leadup and then the actual event, has to be seen to be believed. The sheer joy and absurdity of it … words fail me.
