esrosedotblog

FORMAN

Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Milos Forman's

Lásky jedné plavovlásky / Loves of a Blonde (1965)

This is a nifty little picture.

It has a mild political stance at the beginning; comedy and buffoonery of the bureaucrats.

As it goes along, the laughs subside some and you get the sense of the futility of individual aspirations.

It is true that tragedy and comedy are only a blink away from one another.

In this case, the blink is hope.

I love these small Eastern European films that were made during the breakup of the Soviet block.

It is nice to know that there is a (somewhat) happy ending.

In Forman's case, encouraged by the reception for this film, he went on to make Fireman's Ball which we enjoyed very much but got him in a whole lot of trouble.

The film was banned and he soon had no work. He then fled to the West before they did worse than that.

Here he has had a formidable career making the same delicate sad/funny kinds of films.

It is always interesting when a film like this has a back-story in real (reel) life.

Artists played a huge role in undermining the Soviet regime. The cookie crumbled from its outer edges and finally the center did not hold.

We are watching real-politik in action here.

A 5 out of Netflix5 for the subversives and this gem of a movie.