Die Liebe einer Blondine

A factory manager in rural Czechoslovakia bargains with the army to send men to the area, to boost the morale of his young female workers, deprived of male company since the local boys have been conscripted.

Loves of a Blonde has often been identified as one of the most significant and ambitious productions of the Czech New Wave, a movement in which a group of young filmmakers, many of whom were educated by the national film academy in Prague, including Forman, Ján Kadár, Věra Chytilová and Jiří Menzel, among others, took significant political risks by using cinema to protest the hypocrisy and absurdity of the Communist state.

I'll say it before and I'll say it again, of all the "new wave" movements in Europe, by far my favorite is the one that came out of the Czech cinema. The beauty, the honesty and sometimes the surrealism (though not here) is just spot on, and for me really captures what it means to have film as an art form. That Forman went on to become an international success is no surprise.

I hadn't seen any of Milos Forman's work before I saw this, and it really surprised me (pleasantly). It was a really funny film, with clever characters, very realistic interactions and some surprisingly cheeseless slapstick moments. Also has a movingly downbeat finale.

I doubt many people will make the effort to watch a little known black and white Czech film from the 60s, but those that do will be rewarded.

This is the second of Forman's Czech films I've watched after the other Criterion release, THE FIREMAN'S BALL (1967) - though that was via a late-night Italian TV broadcast some years ago; these two films constitute his most celebrated work from this early phase in his career.

While a pleasant and sharply-observed comedy-drama in itself, which must have seemed fresh at the time (particularly the intimate detail of its teenage romance), I feel that a lot of these unassuming but critically-acclaimed foreign films - often made under strained political conditions - tend to come off as overrated when viewed today (a similar recent example I encountered was CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS [1966]). That said, the film benefits immensely from the wonderful cinematography by Miroslav Ondricek (Forman's longtime collaborator).

Besides, it also includes a couple of lengthy - and delightful - set-pieces: the party sequence, in which the heroine and her two best friends are picked up by a trio of geeky middle-aged soldiers; the scene at the home of the girl's 'boyfriend' (with whom she had a one-night stand), where she causes a commotion by turning up unannounced on his doorstep with a packed suitcase!

The DVD supplements comprise an amusing but irrelevant deleted scene, and an interesting 17-minute interview with Forman - in which he discusses the film's genesis and how the mix of professional and untrained actors proved providential, sealing its essential charm.

Andula is working-class girl living in a Czech town.She sleeps with a pianist called Milda after a party.When she doesn't hear from him, she travels to his parents place, where he still lives.Lásky jedné plavovlásky (English title Loves of a Blonde) from 1965 was the first big hit of Milos Forman.This Czechoslovakian film was nominated for the Golden Globe and Academy Award for best foreign film.In my country, Finland, it won a Jussi Award.Hana Brejchová is wonderful as Andula.Vladimir Pucholt is terrific as Milda.Milada Jezkova and Josef Sebánek are great as his parents.The dialogue is marvelous.Like when Andula and Milda are lying in bed and he explains to her how she's angular.That the woman is shaped like a guitar but she's one painted by Picasso.And there are some terrific scenes.The restaurant scenes are fantastic.Those men on their table are checking on the women on their table, trying to find a way to approach.And when Andula arrives at Milda's place and the mother can't deal with it.Great work from the Czech master.

This is such an exquisite cinematic weave of feelings, I was taken aback. But only half of it is there, the rest you'll have to supply which is even better in a way. Films come into being after all in that space between what is there and the experience in the eye.

But first. Watch it once straight through because it's funny as hell in that gentle way the Czech know so well, just light and bitter enough to be like getting tipsy on life, delighted at the tipsiness. It's well made and well acted, you can see why Milos Forman was quickly tapped by Hollywood.

Watching it once, you'll have this as your template—a teenage girl's impressionable drift through male sexual whims, and bittersweet realization in the end of heartbreak every time. Now bring all these other things to it:

The guys are only looking to get laid, this isn't about them.

It's a story the blonde girl tells to her girlfriend using the photograph of a boy, both real and imagined. Knowing this, is knowing everything else including the seduction is her exploring by allowing herself to be explored.

The gaffe with the bottle of wine sent by horny soldiers to the wrong table, the ugly ducklings instead of the pretty blonde. But it makes its way to the right one, and we have the two soldiers go after the two girls (but not the blondie), and that subplot abandoned with inviting glances.

Now her seduction (remember, still a story she will tell) but we actually skip sex, and go straight to the intimacy and youthful joking around on the bed which is what she yearns for, connection. And as she leaves the room, she meets the ugly duckling coming back to her room after her parallel night with the soldier.

The lecturing by a teacher on girls guarding a woman's honor, and she boards the first bus out of there. Is she mad? Looking for answers?

The cut from her alone in a country road boarding the bus, to a dance floor in the city filled with young couples, to TV footage of dancing girls in the parents' home. Amazing storytelling, because it is not of the story but the air around the girl lifting her from that road to wait for him in his house.

Her being 'locked' in the house, falling asleep to the mother's incessant nagging. Waking up again, now the boy is there but he's not who she would like him to be—she watches heartbroken through a peephole (a cinematic device) as the pettiness of family life is revealed.

So this is wonderful. It ends with her telling this story better than it is.

I would change a single detail—we'd never be shown who is in either of the two photographs.

It would be about any of these girls dreaming up all we've seen. (we see them all asleep in the end)

Sex safely explored inside the fantasy, and the fantasy both 'real' and imaginary, helter skelter so you wouldn't know where last day's glances end and the pillow book starts. The ugly duckling as the blonde. It can support all that and more, excellent, excellent stuff.

In order to appreciate why this is special, watch another Czech film called Daisies (Sedmikrásky), more inventive on the surface, more irreverent on the same subject, but it doesn't hit deep. It has the images but not the life that gives rise to them, there are both here, and how.

It's so good, it rivals Celine and Julie Go Boating on my list of great films, a similar film on the layered dreaming of a girl.