The Firemen's Ball (1967)

Great film,meaningful, complete,short(73 min.).I'V just seen it for the first time today,a DVD Criterion Collection(a big 'THANK YOU').You have everything in there:comedy,drama,etc. I was born in Romania in '69 so I remember very well times like that. Stealing was a national sport and,unfortunately,it doesn't stop today.

If you are born and have live in a former communist country you'll treasure this film and you'll laugh with bitten tears remembering old times.If not,try to understand how life was for the others,less fortunate than you.

Don't miss the features on DVD,Milos Forman talks about the politics in that times.

Fmovies: 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 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 Firemen's Ball fmovies. 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.

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.

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.