Forman long maintained that Ball<\/em> was not intended to be read as a straight allegory of any particular government. \u201cEverybody has the best intentions,\u201d he\u2019s quoted as saying in Peter Hames\u2019s book The Czechoslovak New Wave<\/em>. \u201cBut suddenly things turn out in such a catastrophic way that, for me, this is a vision of what’s going on today in the world.\u201d For this group of hapless volunteer firemen, catastrophe is evident from the start. Before the party has even begun, someone has stolen a chocolate cake from the raffle prize table and the banner has caught fire. The night\u2019s star attraction is the department\u2019s eighty-six year old honorary president who was recently diagnosed with cancer, though it\u2019s unclear if he\u2019s been informed of it yet. \u201cIf he doesn\u2019t know, we\u2019re not going to tell him,\u201d the other men agree. This is just the first of many episodes of blame passing and petty arguments that make up the bulk of the film\u2019s fleet seventy-three minute runtime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Forman shot in a real Palace of Culture in Vrchlab\u00ed, and the majority of the cast were non-professionals culled from the local townspeople and fire brigade. This gives Ball<\/em> an lived-in, almost documentarian quality; each frame is bursting to the brim with interesting faces and authentic details. As the night wears on and grows in raucousness, the firemen concern themselves with finding eight suitable candidates for their Miss Firemen contest among the young women in attendance. But like everything else, this process is handled with exquisite ineptness as each judge has differing opinions on the best attributes of said candidates and how best to observe them, not to mention the constant haggling from parents who want to make sure their daughters are included in the ranks. The camera often takes the men\u2019s point of view in these moments, making the audience both uncomfortably complicit in the ogling that they do and unwitting recipients of the contempt the girls feel for them. Understandably, the young women are reluctant to participate and the ceremony erupts into chaos as they hide in the ladies room which the firemen, ever compliant, won\u2019t enter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not all blundering anarchy, though, and there are consequences to these men\u2019s incompetency. When a real blaze interrupts the festivities, the firemen are unable to get their new engine to work and resort to throwing snow onto the flames while the old man they carried out of the house against his will watches it burn to the ground. Later, they will attempt to give him the raffle tickets in a show of support but, tellingly, the M.C. can\u2019t think of the word \u201csolidarity.\u201d All the prizes have been pilfered by then anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Haunting moments like these make the reactions Forman received from Czech censors, who claimed the film ridiculed the working man, all the more perplexing, though perhaps not surprising. It\u2019s practically a requirement of great satire that it be misread by its targets. But the best satirists are also humanists, and Forman clearly has a certain amount of affection for these bumbling bureaucrats\u2014or at least a thorough understanding that all governmental bodies are flawed because they\u2019re made up of people, who are venal, self-righteous, and occasionally well-meaning. This is hardly unique to his place and time. \u201cThe prestige of the brigade is more important than my honesty,\u201d a fireman insists late in the film, which sounds like something that could be said in the Senate today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, many in his country didn\u2019t agree. Before Ball<\/em> was even released, Forman faced ten years in prison for \u201ceconomic damage to the state\u201d after his producer Carlo Ponti pulled his financing. But the director had some friends in high places, and after he showed the film to Claude Berri in Paris, it was passed along to Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut who bought the international rights. After being shelved for a year, the film was playing in Czech theaters when the Russians rolled their tanks in and subsequently banned it \u201cforever.\u201d It was thanks to the efforts \u2013 and funds \u2013 of Truffaut that Ball<\/em> received distribution in the west. Forman left Czechoslovakia in 1968 and never made a film there again.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was lucky. While Forman went on to become a successful, Oscar-winning director in America, many of his New Wave compatriots, whether by choice or circumstance, stayed behind, continuing to make work that had to pass the muster of one or two idiots. By the early \u201870s, the movement had mostly been stifled, never quite achieving the influential reach of its French and German counterparts. One wonders what other subversive masterpieces have been lost, or never got made in the first place. Nevertheless, The Fireman\u2019s Ball<\/em> serves as a reminder that making radical art is possible even in a totalitarian environment. We just have to be willing to offend a few sensibilities along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/firemens-ball-1024x576.jpg\")
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