"Here at the front end, the narrator.
At the front end, the meanwhile: God's laughter."
--Jorie Graham
--Jorie Graham
Before coming to Hollywood to make films about cultural misfits, Milos Forman was already a Czech New Wave exemplar of dark comedy. He crafted these early films with bleak humor, but a humor sugarcoated with pathos.
Loves of a Blonde, in particular, is set in a small factory town disproportionately populated by women. A couple of military officials decide the town would be a good place for soldiers to go. Andula (Hana Brejchova) and her friends decide to attend the dance welcoming the soldiers and they end up spending most of the night with three soldiers, but all involved end up going their separate ways. Andula herself ends up with a young piano player, Milda (Vladimir Pucholt) whom she later visits in Prague. When she arrives, he is not there, but his parents take her in. She stays the night, but returns to her factory job. The film ends with Andula telling her friend that she plans to visit a lot more, oblivious to what Milda is really like.
So goes the plot sans episode, yet it is precisely episodic sensibility that makes the film. Loves establishes its unique sensibility by combining several key components. Firstly, each episode is a comedy of errors. Second, each episode is laced with ignorance on the part of the characters where the audience readily sees what the characters are missing. Finally, each episode gives way to gradually worse situations for Andula.
The most noteworthy example of Forman's penchant for episode happens at the welcoming dance for the soldiers. Three soldiers are staring at Andula and her two friends. As the girls notice, they think it yukky and encourage one another not to stare back, but they cannot help it. The soldiers then send a bottle to the girls' table, but the waiter gives it to some other girls the next table over. The girls who receive the bottle are flattered while the girls for whom the bottle is intended, are relieved. The soldiers are upset and demand that the waiter bring the bottle to the correct table and he does. Andula and her friends end up going along with the soldiers, though they are wholly unimpressed by them. The episode incorporates a comedy of errors, ignorant characters, and leads to a worsened situation.
These elements, by themselves, show off Forman's sense of theater, but what provides his cinematic virtuosity is how he makes the episode happen in the "meanwhile." What is meant here, is that Forman does not establish the scene with a bigger picture. Every shot is taken going from one limited view to the next, leaving the audience to make the connections. Still, Forman manages to successfully subject the scene to God's laughter.
In a final note, Forman shows off his cinematic vocabulary in what seems like two references to Lumiere films: "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat," and "Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory." Whether the shots were intentional is another story, but given Forman's expertise in film economy, the intention is probable.
IMDb rates this film 7.6 stars out of 10
Film 101 rates this film 5 stars out of 5 (not red stars)
Other films by Forman include Firemen's Ball, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, Man on the Moon, and The People vs. Larry Flynt.
