Milos Forman's The Firemen's Ball is both a dazzling comedy and a provocative political satire. The volunteer fire department in a small Czechoslovak town decides to organize a ball in a townhall with lottery and a beauty contest. The unit's firemen plan a tribute to their 86 year old honorary chairman with an engraved miniature ax. During the ball,the committee is gathered to look for eight candidates for the beauty contest ,but they have difficulty to find enough of them. But things start going as wrong as they possibly could. The lottery prizes keep getting stolen at an increasing rate and the general chaos grows more and more out of control. The director creates a focused attack on the communist system and the effect of its policies on a working class community.
Here director is indirectly criticising not just a decadent society, but the communist regime whose lawlessness and twisted sense of values brought about the decay. It makes the point more clear when an actual fire breaks out in the town. Milos Forman was charged with sabotaging the socialist society. This film was banned “permanently and forever” by Communist censors at that time.
Andula, a pretty young girl living in a fading Czech factory town. Andula and her friends go to a party where they are seen as object of adoration by few soldiers. There Andula meets with Milda, a young pianist with the band who was visiting from Prague. After they spend the night together,he leaves and she travels to Prague to find him.
She takes the affair more seriously than he does and when she suddenly visits to his house ,everybody is surprised. It is a humored tale about a woman's journey to the discover of the first love. It's a quite progressive view this film had back in the 1960s in showing Andula trying to not flirt with soldiers in one way but end up talking to them ,then later to have a romantic evening with Milda. 'Loves of A Blonde' is a bittersweet film ; it is bitingly tragic and simultaneously touching. The film also offers a scathing characterization of society as a whole.
Ucho is a Czech language film by Karel Kachyna completed in 1970. This film is about a bitter married couple - Ludvik (an official of ruling communist regime) and his wife Anna. They return home drunkenly and discover that something is amiss.
The door of the house is unlocked. The telephone lines are out of order. They returned from a communist official party and there Ludvik discovered that other bureaucrats including his superior were mysteriously detained. Ludvik becomes sure that their house is bugged. Tension appears between the couple . They both start accusing each other and bring on long forgotten things into open.
This is a great film about paranoia,the fear of being watched. People
become so seemingly paranoid while working in a communist party. Another important aspect of the film is the disintegrating relationship between the man and his wife. This film is theatrical in it's approach because incidents happen mainly within a house . This film is also theatrical because of it's dialogues. The black-and-white cinematography of "The Ear" is unusually expressive. At the party, there is lot of hand-held camera and wide angle point of view shots .
The performances by both the lead actors were superb. Miss Bohdalová in particular was the best performer. She displayed a whole lot of ranges.
