Wednesday 15 February 2006

A Blonde in Love (1965)

Also known as "Loves of a Blonde", this was Milos Forman's penultimate film before leaving Czechoslovakia for the States.  He's directed relatively few movies but all of them are of interest; this one and his last Czech film, "The Fireman's Ball" are very highly rated probably because they were so unexpected in the strict communist regime of the day.  The fact that Forman was even able to get away with making them possibly accounts for a large part of their reputations.  This one tells of a young girl working in a shoe factory in a dead-end hick town.  At a dance where the management has imported some soldiers to try to keep her and the other young workers happy (the fact that the soldiers are middle-aged and kind of ugly didn't register with the bosses), she is attracted by the piano player who sweet-talks her into bed.  Swearing his devotion, he is aghast when she follows him to Prague where he lives with his parents.  The latter are appalled by her boldness and tell their son off accordingly -- and it is amusing that bourgeois prejudices survive so strongly in a supposedly totalitarian society.  She returns to her work but is unable to admit to her workmates that her dreams of love are hollow.

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