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The Fireman's Ball was a very interesting film from director Milos Forman. I personally prefer Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but I was surprised at how good The Fireman's Ball was. My only real problem is the length, if anything I wished the film was longer.

That said, it is very well made with a realistic setting and superb editing. Forman directs wonderfully, the script is deep and funny and the story changing from gently mocking small-town manners to a blazing allegorical satire on the incompetence of the rulers drew me right in. The pace was taut, there are many details to be admired not just with the ball but with the satire and politics too and the acting is great.

All in all, a very interesting film but not the career-best film from a talented director such as Forman. It is still worth a watch though, and works on repeat viewings. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Often hilarious comedy was an early effort by Forman. The characters reveal their attributes and flaws over the course of a drunken bash that involves stealing, sex, abundant alcohol consumption, and a Fireman's Ball Beauty Contest. Forman had to deny that there was a political message behind the film in Socialist late 60's Czechoslavakia. He has a rare talent for presenting humans, not necessarily pretty, but engaging and natural. Forman encourages us in an introduction to not think too much.

'The Firemen's Ball' (the Czech title is 'Horí, má panenko' - 'Fire, my doll!'), the last film made in Czechoslovakia by Milos Forman in 1967, before the 'spring of Prague' and the exile that moved his career to the West, is in my opinion not only his best film and the best film of the talented and courageous Czechoslovak film schools of the 1960s, but also, allegedly, the best film made in the communist countries behind of the Iron Curtain. It is a symbolic film, a precious jewel that in only 70 minutes concentrates sarcasm and the absurd, social and political criticism on the edge of the permissible under the conditions of censorship, and the refusal of the film mekers to be reduced to silence.

Somewhere in the socialist Czechoslovakia, the firemen committee organizes a ball in honor of the 86th birthday of their former chief. Birthday 85th had been omitted, and in the meantime the veteran of the guild has been detected with cancer, though he doesn't know it. The celebration is being prepared according to all the rules of this kind of activity, with a raffle from which the objects are stolen, first the ones of value and the consumables, then the smaller ones, finally everything disappears. A beauty contest is organized in which the young women are judged by their physical qualities, being are enlisted some on the basis of relationships, some on the basis of misogynistic criteria. Formalism and propaganda language, inefficiency and ineptitude of bureaucratic systems meet in a comedy of the absurd. Some of the satirized failures are systemic, others belong to human nature and its eternal morals and weaknesses. In one form or another the script of this film could have been written by Moliere or by Ionesco.

Forman's film is a concentrate of sarcastic satire. Each of the characters has his or her role in the story and his or her distinct personality, even if present on the screen for only a few seconds. The pace is marked by the choreography of the movement of the characters in the dance scenes in sync with the movements of the camera and by the soundtrack, in which the ball orchestra plays loud music. Laughter sometimes turns into a shout of pain, and the two final scenes are symbolic and at the same time of an irresistible black comic. Comedy of morals meets political cinema in this unique film. Seen today from a historical perspective, it can be said that 'The Firemen's Ball' describes all the reasons (bureaucracy, propaganda, corruption) that have led to the collapse of the structure of the communist states but is also a reflection upon human nature that transcends political systems and upheavals.

It's a pretty funny and witty slapstick comedy, until you realize that you're laughing at the objectification of women and the corruptness of bureaucracy. So, in that sense, it's a pretty sly sociopolitical commentary. So sly, in fact, that you don't even notice it in the film. You've got to read up on it to figure out what Forman was making fun of, and even then he denies any meaning behind the humour. The non-actors and natural dialogue add to the absurdity of the situations, and the end's got a similar sharp veer towards tragedy as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In fact, the humour in both films is the same, as what you're laughing at really shouldn't be that funny at all, but it is. Overall, this is a light but deep (if that makes any sense) product of the Czechoslovak New Wave, and it's definitely worth a watch.

Without hesitation, I place "The Firemen's Ball" to the apex of world comedy, together with Buster Keaton's "The General", Stanley Kramer's "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World", Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" and Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot".

Funny-wise, this is the definition of INTELLIGENCE, WITS, SPIRIT, INSPIRATION, BRIGHTNESS. The laughs are coming non-stop, in an atrocious vein. But there is much more than that...

Yes, there is much more - because, all being said and done, we watch an extremely sad story... The poor blundering provincials, limited, foolish, ridiculous in their stupidity, pathetically try to have a good time, and they only arrive to set-up a grotesque, sub-human masquerade... Innocent in their insanity, childish in their ignorance, their solemn ball looks like a parade of apes dressed as human beings. And the (you-know-what) hits the fan at the moment when things get really serious: the fire at Pan Havelka's house. During that excruciating scene, we really see the fallacy of it all.

The ending - all of it! - is the top of the masterpiece. The solemn delivery of the homage (that was stolen also from its case!), followed by the dawn shot of the two poor old men covering themselves with the same blanket, under the gently beginning snow-fall, is worthy of Chaplin. Definitely, with this movie, Forman offered a priceless heritage to the world of cinema - and culture; and spirit; and HUMANITY.

The Firemen's Ball (1967) **** Watching Forman's acclaimed comedy ''The Firemen's Ball'' was a very unique movie-going experience. It is filled with the extraordinary subtle humor, compassion for its characters, very realistic setting, acting & feeling and some brief satire. It got various reviews upon releasing. Some critics hailed it as a minimalistic masterpiece (Roger Ebert) others just was ''resistant'' to it's so-called charm (Leonard Maltin). I just know I wasn't. Judge for yourself. I can't, however, recall so sharp and intelligent script and so believable performances packed in mere 70 minutes. I find it superior to acclaimed Oscar winning Czech comedy filmed a year before by Jiri Menzel – ''Closely Watched Trains''. By the way, interesting note: Czechoslovakian movies were nominated four years in a row for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1960ies. ('65, '66, '67, '68). Two of them won it (''Shop on a main street'' in 1965 and ''Closely Watched Trains'' in 1967) and two didn't (''Loves of a Blonde'' in 1966 and ''The Firemen's Ball'' in 1968).

This film is great taken at face value. One does not really need to know anything about Czechoslovakia or the time period to appreciate its brilliance, the same way one does not need to know much about Medieval Denmark to appreciate Shakespeare's Hamlet. Therefore, I wish some of you here would refrain from making all kinds of clever comments about communism or how this film attempts to ridicule it. It's a simple story that is both hilarious and tragic, and it could have taken place anywhere. After all, human greed, dishonesty and stupidity are all around us. It just so happens this film was made in Czechoslovakia in 1967 by a Czech director, but the message is universal, and that is what makes it so great. So, to those of you who try read a whole bunch of stuff into it, please drop the condescending western attitude and just enjoy this gem of a movie without analyzing it too much.

Sadly, "The Fireman's Ball" can hardly be watched anymore as anything more than a historical curiosity. Without the proper background, and without knowing that it's an early work from the very same director who would later create American classics like Hair, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Man on the Moon, you'll almost definitely pass it by and you certainly can't figure out by yourself that it was considered harsh enough political satire at the time of its release that it was banned in Czechoslovakia for being damaging to the communist regime. By itself, there isn't much about The Fireman's Ball to set it apart from the British "Carry On" movies or from any other oddball comedy made in Europe in the 60's and 70's.

That's not to say the film doesn't have some excellent scenes; the one with the beauty pageant contestants in the officers' office is the most famous but certainly not the only memorable one. The humor is black and dry but the very natural acting by the local, unknown actors makes all the difference, their facial expressions telling a complete story all by themselves, and the film has some truly inspired shots (especially considering the meager budget). The great scenes are few and far-between, though, and they can easily get lost in the general messy chaos, and it's easy for the viewer to get bored quickly. To sum up, I recommend it for cinephiles and lovers of cinema history, especially cinema made under Communist regimes - I'm glad I saw it even though I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped to - but not for the general public.

I decided to watch this because I recently became a firefighter, I saw the good reviews, and I like to watch foreign films. I actually speak Russian too, so I though it would be interesting to listen to the Czech. Well, first of all, the movie has almost nothing to do with firefighting, which is okay, but I didn't find it very interesting at all as a comedy. I probably need to know a lot more context to have it make sense to me, but, from my perspective, it's barely funny and somehow drawn out for such a short film. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. I just thought I should leave this review here, since almost all the other reviews are glowing.

I'm not much of a foreign film fan, and tend to avoid subtitled films. But I ran across this film on TV one day, and it captured me.

It feels as real as a documentary, and it is as funny as movies get. You'll also pick up a real feeling of how another society might be.

Don't miss this, even if you have to buy it.

Milos Forman's best known film is probably the awarded 1975 mental institution tale One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson, but his early Czechoslovakian movies are not to be missed either by admirers of his later work. The 1967 comedy The Firemen's Ball has been interpreted as an allegory for the Socialist system that had a major effect on how people lived in Eastern Europe at the time, but it also works as an entertaining little flick in its own right.

The loose plot was inspired by an actual firemen's ball that Forman and his screenwriter friends once attended. The aging fire department of a small village is arranging a ball in honour of their elderly chairman who is turning 86 and, unbeknownst to him, dying of cancer. The program is to include at least music, dancing, a beauty contest for the ladies and a lottery with various prizes, but it seems that Murphy's Law is alive and well in the village: the lottery prizes keep getting stolen at an increasing rate, nobody wants to participate in the beauty pageant and the general chaos grows more and more out of control. Soon the firemen get to demonstrate their occupational skills in a genuine incident.

Most of the actors were reportedly real firemen from the town where the movie was shot, but despite their lack of acting experience they fit in their roles perfectly. The grumpy men's arguments about the stressful arrangements are pretty hilarious, but the women are funny too even though their roles are somewhat smaller. Also, personally I didn't find any of the reluctant beauty contestants ugly at all, unlike the frustrated committee members! In addition, I should give a nod to the catchy ballroom music that is playing for a lot of the time and even references a Beatles song at one point. It is possible that the atmosphere-driven collection of errors and misadventures may feel aimless to some viewers who would prefer a stronger plot, but those with a fondness for looser narratives should find it easy to enjoy the firemen's adversities.

Besides the comical bumbling, there are also more melancholic moments in the short movie. The fire scene near the end carries a feel of powerlessness when an old man watches his house burn down while the firemen futilely try to put the flames out by shoveling snow into the fire. Still, the service of drinks is never interrupted during the turmoil, keeping up appearances no matter what. The whole plot line of the stolen lottery prizes also culminates in a wistful moment when the honorary chairman finally gets to accept his gift after sincerely thanking his colleagues for the help they have given over the years. This lack of the oft-mentioned solidarity among the masses (not so much among individuals) may have been what prompted the Czechoslovakian officials to originally ban the film "forever".

As for myself, I can say I enjoyed The Firemen's Ball more than Loves of a Blonde (1965), the other early Forman film I have seen at the moment. Czech cinema in general is something I'd like to get better acquainted with later, but for now I can say that The Firemen's Ball is probably my favourite of the handful of movies I have seen from the country.

Reaching 70 years young in a few weeks, I was thinking about some of the films I most enjoyed when young and would I still enjoy them now? The Fireman's Ball seems to be a lost comedy here in the UK. It never pops up on TV and does not appear in film festivals or revival houses.What a loss to those who were not alive in 1967. If your a Brit reading this think Dad's Army and then fireman instead and your nearly there.Its country of origin is Czechoslovakia,with a little help from Italy, a big hit with a best foreign film Oscar, a running time of 73 mins and not one minute wasted.A town's fire department celebrating with a ball to honour it's retired elderly chief, a beauty contest and a large table with raffle prizes that vanish one by one, that's it,but oh boy it is good, totally droll and very funny.The punchline at it's end maybe posted but who cares. If only some of the comedies today knew when to stop. Really pleased that this was one old film I rerented.

Milos Forman's third feature THE FIREMEN'S BALL is the last film he made in his motherland and Oscar-nominated in the BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM category (lost to U.S.S.R.'s mammoth WAR AND PEACE made by Sergei Bondarchuk). It is an outright comedy masked with mordant mockery of the Communist party, the story takes place on the day when the titular ball is held to honor an 86-year-old ex-chairman of the fire brigade in a small Czech town, and real-life firemen and non-professionals constitute most of the cast.

Milos Forman is unequivocally a master of satire and an adept hand in shaping up its comical story-line inside a groaning town hall peopled with local folks, the succinct diegesis (the film's running time is merely 71 minutes) chiefly concentrates on two burlesques: a droll situation of missing raffle prizes which are overseen by a hapless fireman Josef (Kolb) and his wife (Jezková) and a firemen committee's listing up proper candidates for a beauty pageant, whose winner will have the honor to confer a honorific gift to the ex-chairman as the culmination of the evening. While the former is portrayed with a peevish overtone and somewhat plebeian rejoinders, but at least it elicits some chuckle when petty larceny is revealed within one's own household; the latter is plain lowbrow hi-jinks pampering for lecherous geezers, and crass to the petticoat participants (exploitative to the younger ones and disrespectful to the motherly ones), that is not what we contemplate as comedy with class.

But the film actually ameliorates itself when a fire alarm disrupts the farce where the pageant goes awry and Forman does create something aesthetically poetic with the spectacular outdoor scenes where a house is devoured by conflagration with its intractable owner wistfully looking back in consternation and on-lookers casting lugubrious looks to the loss and incandescence, then this piteous instance precipitates the final dressing-down of the tentacles of corruption and filching among the country's populace (the lights-off tactic is so accurate for those who grow up in a Communist country and of course it backfires), where the famous line, paraphrased here "the repute of the brigade over one's own integrity" becomes an obvious fair game of the censorship, it is an outright attack on the authority's inaction and state-over-people frame of mind, one can hardly conceive it as unintentional, with its conspicuously democracy-angling slant, in hindsight it even tempts one to doubt whether Forman was deliberately concocting this film as a stepping stone for himself to bail out from the regime he can no longer consent with. A rather shrewd and dicey stratagem if it were true, and looking at where he is now? Enshrined among the rarefied two- times Oscar-winning director list with two BEST PICTURE champs under his belt, Mr. Forman is a torchbearer for many a foreign filmmaker to follow suit, whose artistic agenda is at loggerheads with stately censorship.

Having been revered as a landmark of Czechoslovak New Wave ever since, THE FIREMEN'S BALL is a substantially political caricature on top of its ostensible frivolousness, not without its own beguiling magnetism (the final shot is a coup de maître), yet it does trigger a lingering suspicion cannot be summarily dissipated, how much part has its ideology played in its road of canonization?

The volunteer fire department in a small Czech town organizes a ball in a town hall with lottery and a beauty contest.They also plan to give a small fire axe as a 86- year old birthday gift to their honorary chairman who has a cancer (which he doesn't know).But things start going as wrong as they possibly could.Hori, Má Panenko (The Firemen's Ball) from 1967 is directed by Milos Forman.The other of its producers is Carlo Ponti.The movie uses mostly no real actors.The firemen are real firemen of the small town where it is set.But all of those people do a fine job.Jan Vostrcil plays Head of Committee.Josef Sebánek is Committee Member #2.Jan Stöckl is Retired Fire Chief.The movie has got some scenes to make you amused.It's most amusing when the man and the woman go under the table to play with each other.And when one of the beauty contestants takes off her clothes.Or when the old man starts walking towards the stage.This is the first film Forman shot in color.It is also the last film he made in his native Czechoslovakia.Then he went on to America to make some classics.

The fire department in a small town is having a big party when the ex-boss of the department celebrates his 86th birthday. The whole town is invited but things don't go as planned. Someone is stealing the prizes to the lottery and the candidates for the Miss Fire-Department beauty contest are neither willing nor particularly beautiful.

The film has widely been interpreted as a satire on the East European Communist system, and it was "banned forever" in Czechoslovakia following the Soviet invasion of 1968. Forman reflected that the film was not intended to be a satire of any particular government, saying, "I didn't want to give any special message or allegory. I wanted just to make a comedy knowing that if I'll be real, if I'll be true, the film will automatically reveal an allegorical sense. That's a problem of all governments, of all committees, including firemen's committees. That they try and they pretend and they announce that they are preparing a happy, gay, amusing evening or life for the people. And everybody has the best intentions... But 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." And he is right. This is not anti-Soviet or anti-Czech. It plays just as well in the United States as a satire on bureaucracy, or could be seen without any satire at all... why not just a group of bumbling men? When Abbott and Costello pretend to be something, is it an insult to that profession? Of course not.

I liked this movie, but then I like slower moving movies with actors that look like real people. This film gives real historical insight into a communist society, including how artists such as Forman tried to get a message through without being completely censored. I have a question about this film, however. I keep reading and hearing that this film uses no professional actors, and the firemen you see are the real firemen from a small town in Bohemia. However, several of these actors were also in Loves of a Blonde, which was an earlier film. So, I surmise that some of the firemen were the real firemen, and others were actors he had used before. This film is well worth seeing. I laughed aloud several times, and smiled through all of it. He has a gift for the small moments of humor and pathos in anyone's life, and it is quite a humorous comment on Czechoslovakian communist society.

The Fireman's committee organise a ball for their 86 year old ex chairman, but everything they try to bring to the occasion goes terribly and hilariously wrong.

Wonderfully funny satire on the communist regime, with the committee chock full of hilarious characters with delusions of grandeur who couldn't organise a ..... It's that it's all done with such serious intent which makes it so funny, as these idiots argue so politely with each other and with such an air of self importance over complete nonsense in their plans for a tombola, a beauty contest and a presentation ceremony, with all the guests have a whale of a time, but who are seemingly all quite corrupt. It was of course banned behind the iron curtain. Great fun.

Hilarious and action packed. Better than ladder 49 and fireman Sam put together

Milos Forman's $65,000 black comedy, which clocks in just above one hour, takes place as small town firemen reckon on their festivity, are present at it, and endure it. They've arranged the titular ball in honor of their former chief, though it may be in the chief's eleventh hour. The beginning scene seems to promise an airy screwball comedy with lines like, "We should have given it to him last year, when he was 85 instead of now when he's about to die." As is made clear while the simple men theorize on the reasoning contrary to that observation that the antiquated fireman, diagnosed with cancer unbeknownst to himself, will be awarded a princely little fire ax in a velvet-padded box. Following this opening scene, a fireman balances carefully on a high ladder to carefully singe the sides of a paper banner until his ladder loses its footing, he is left dangling, and the poster bursts into flames. Beyond these actually quite underplayed scenes, the comic feel diminishes in consistency.

One scene which stands out is easily one of the funnier moments, but even still it could have been funnier: In the course of the ball, a local barn catches fire, and the firemen rush the rest of the town to the scene. But their truck getting stuck in the snow is much more pivotal and potentially funny than its execution here, as by the time they get there, the barn is overcome by an inferno. Nonetheless, there are laughs to be had at this point: The sullen farmer is staring longingly at his blazing barn, the firemen heed the suggestion that his chair be turned away from it, but the farmer simply turns his head to continue staring longingly at the barn. And when the farmer whines that he is cold, the firemen do the only thing they really can and move his chair closer to the fire.

The swelling to that scene consists of the firemen's struggle for a beauty pageant, with the queen deputized to bestow the ax. They fill a table with raffle prizes that are salivated over, as implied in a very restricted sense within the context of the film's time and place. So, the prizes begin to depart a bit too early from sight. The beauty pageant is a catastrophe of ignorance and disorganization, and not least owing to hardly any of the neighborhood girls, none of whom are beauties, have any desire to be involved.

Siding very much with the film itself concerning its treacherous political history, Forman is not scoffing at his characters, but at the system they populate. Frankly, I think the censors knew this when they condemned it as a damaging picture of Czech society, because that is the reactive approach in a fragile system that panics about criticism. Censors have always feigned the role of patriots, regarding any criticism as unpatriotic, when in effect criticism is a patriotic responsibility. Even now here in America, when the media is judged for disapproval, it most often merely signals that someone has had the nerve to probe the guiding principles of the party in power.

So, this presently obscure installment in the tremendous Criterion Collection appeals to me as a historical example, particularly with which to further open the elements of the Bush administration, and not so much for the film's content in and of itself. As a raucous comedy by Milos Forman, it today sponges no oomph from its hazardous time, as it clearly did then. And it is as a indirect topical commentary where this film gains momentum, and alas Forman cleverly for the sake of his film's spirit did not urge his political arguments, leaning back with a grin to let them make themselves, insinuating with poise from the histrionics.

"The Firemen's Ball" was the fourth in a string of Czech films that received Foreign Language Film Oscar nominations between 1965 and 1968. (Two of them, the sensational "The Shop on Main Street" and "Closely Watched Trains" won the award). I saw this film on TCM, where Alicia Malone in her intro talked about both how funny it is and how controversial it was at the time for its criticism of the post-WWII Czech government. I spent the entire running time of this film feeling like I must have to be Czech myself in order to understand why any of it was funny, and not having a clue about what it was criticizing because of my lack of understanding about Czech culture.

In both instances, I'm more than happy to concede that the fault is with me rather than with the filmmaking, but it doesn't change the fact that I found little to enjoy about this movie. It's interesting to see another example of the Czech New Wave that hit screens in the 1960s, and it's always interesting to me to see which films the Academy singles out for recognition in any given year, but my predominant thought while watching this movie was that it had just about the ugliest cast ever assembled, not exactly a rousing recommendation.

Milos Forman, who would go on to achieve mainstream fame by directing such major American releases as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, "Ragtime," and "Amadeus," directed this film as well.

Grade: C