(by Joel)
Loves of a Blonde, Czechoslovakia,1965, dir. Milos Forman
Starring Hana Brejchová, Vladimír Pucholt
Story: A young woman sleeps with a charming young pianist, but when she pursues him to Prague, she discovers that he did not take their romance as seriously as she did.
The title, like so much else in Milos Forman’s second feature, is gently ironic. With its plural “Loves,” it suggests a worldly figure, a free-spirited sixties girl who rounds up loves, and lovers, with a sense of carefree fun. At the same time, “a Blonde” implies a symbolic woman more than an actual one, probably a silly girl who falls in love and breaks hearts without knowing her own power and/or foolishness. Well, the blonde in Loves of a Blonde, Andula (Hana Brejchová), is rather foolish. And in the course of the movie, she does upset and befuddle at least one boyfriend, by recoiling from him without telling him why. Yet at film’s end, she has had only one real lover, and it was her heart that was broken, not his. Most importantly, Andula is not Julie Christie sent to Prague – not a swinger, but a dreamer, a naïve young woman who is not responding to a new freedom but reacting to a lack thereof. Just as the Prague Spring would flourish for a brief period, before Soviet tanks re-imposed a totalitarian regime for another two decades, so Andula’s season of hope is short. When we last see her, she is back in the factory toiling away, sad and quite alone. Though Loves of a Blonde is a comedy, and a very funny one, at its core is a tragic (albeit still romantic) sense of life.
The film begins with a clever premise rich with comic potential. At the provincial factory where Andula works (living nearby in a very crowded dormitory), women outnumber men nineteen to one. Confronting a military official, the benevolent factory owner begs relief for his working girls: station soldiers near the factory, and a social life will emerge to take the edge off tensions in the area. The typically bungling bureaucracy (much satirized in Forman’s next film, The Fireman’s Ball) responds by sending a regiment to the hinterlands…but it’s a regiment of middle-aged reservists. Still, men are men, and women are women; there’s a dance, and Forman has much fun with a trio of bumbling would-be Romeos who attempt to woo Andula and her friends. Wine is sent to the wrong table and three homely young women are humiliated when the men force the waiter to take it back; later they’ll have their revenge when one of the men loses his wedding ring and it rolls under their table, forcing him to crawl on his hands and knees as they stick their feet in his face and watch water spill down his back.
Only one of the men will end up getting lucky, and it isn’t with Andula or her pals (in fact, it’s with one of those initially rejected girls). Andula, meanwhile, will make love before the night’s over, but her partner is Milda, a member of the band and one of the few young men in the vicinity, though he’s only in town for this particular engagement. A pianist, he proves as adept at playing the young woman as he was at his instrument – overcoming all her resistance with a mixture of ploys, playfulness, and relentless pleading. In this episode there is also comedy: about to crawl into bed, the nude young lovers are interrupted by a curtain that keeps shooting up, even collapsing on Milda as he tries to fix it. Yet there is sadness too; in their first encounter, Andula admits that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade after fighting with her mother. Milda callously feigns interest while entreating her to come upstairs, for him asking about her suicide attempt is just one more tactic to get her in the sack. No wonder Andula hovers hesitantly on the edge of the bed as Milda caresses her – asked what’s wrong, she responds, “I don’t trust you.” Then the carnal embrace obliterates all doubt, and ecstacy gives way to bliss as a post-coital conversation shows the two at their most relaxed and liberated. It’s the happiest moment in the movie.
We can have little doubt that it’s Andula’s happiest moment ever; the rest of the film sees her restless energy without relief. With few options, she is forced to date a young motorcyclist who disappears for a month and then shows up angrily demanding that she wear his ring. At other times, she cuddles in bed with her many roommates, whispering about possible boyfriends and exciting encounters, while a girl in the corner strums a guitar. No wonder that as soon as there’s a break from work, Andula hitchhikes into Prague, following up on Milda’s meangingless invitation to visit him in the city. There she will be confronted by Milda’s nonplussed parents, a bumbling father and a nattering mother. Their down-to-earth practicality and cantankerous way of showing affection (though they probably would not recognize it as such) helps absorb the shock of Andula’s humiliation, but it only goes so far. When Milda comes home drunk, he weaves between coldly denying any knowledge of the girl (by then asleep in his own bed) and buttering her up when he realizes she’s listening. Eventually, his mother forces him to sleep in the bed between her and his father, and a hilarious extended dialogue ensues with the family bickering and yanking the sheet back and forth. Then a cut to Andula, weeping silently at the door, not only because they’re fighting about her but because there’s a warmth to their arguments, a familial closeness that she does not have. The laughter sticks in our throats.
If the comedy comes from the premises and situations, while the tragedy comes from the overall shape of the film (and the quiet, telling moments scattered throughout), then the romanticism lies in the overarching mood (and the form which achieves this mood). Loves of a Blonde is a sixties gem, a consolidation of British working-class realism, French looseness and warmth, and the recent Italian penchant for a more personalized neorealism. But it contains a cool warmth, a shadowy lightness, that is particularly Czech in its paradoxical beauty – that region has always fused a sense of Germanic/Central European brooding with a free-spirited refinement and playfulness more associated with the western and southern European nations, and its cinema is no exception. This sensibility is best expressed by Forman’s most important collaborator (and one of the key forces behind the Czech New Wave), the cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek. In an astute and evocative essay for the Criterion Collection, Dave Kehr gamely expresses the quality of Ondricek’s work: “The film’s low-contrast lighting infuses all of the locations, as inherently grim as they may be, with a sweetly mysterious softness, as if a principle of compassion existed in the world alongside its cruelty.”
In addition to the subtlety of the love scenes, Ondricek and Forman accomplish a tour-de-force at the sock hop, that ubiquituous touchstone of the sixties New Wave (no matter the country). The scene was shot in documentary fashion, with two cameras operating simultaneously: one focused on the main characters, the other prowling the dance hall collecting random faces, expressions, and gestures. A similar effect is achieved by Forman’s use of both professional and nonprofessional actors. Vladimír Pucholt, who plays Milda, was a big star at the time, but his father was played by cinematographer Ondricek’s uncle, while Forman cast a gregarious woman he met on the trolley as Milda’s mother. Starring as Andula, Hana Brejchová made her film debut, though her sister was already a famous actress (and, incidentally, Forman’s wife). Brejchová projects an unassuming shyness which is perfect for the role, engendering both our sympathy and a kind of reserved distance. This latter quality is important; while we always sympathize with Andula, the film is not limited to her point of view and we can often see where she’s going wrong (and worry for her). Not only here does the film offers up a mixture of subjectivity and objectivity, a quality revealed in the play between expressionist close-ups and impressionistic documentary shots, and also embedded in the screenplay itself.
In that same Criterion essay, Kehr expertly excavates the subtle structure of the film’s seemingly freewheeling, episodic, and immersive narrative:
“Loves of a Blonde breaks down into three acts, each of which could stand alone as a short story. …Over the course of the three acts, the film’s context evolves from social satire (set in a public space) to emotional intimacy (confined to the private space of a single room and a single bed) to domestic drama (set in the awkward private-public space of a family apartment). The thematic shifts reflect the shifts in setting: The first section is centered on youth and infinite possibility; the second on young adulthood and romantic fulfillment; the third on maturity and inevitable disappointment. For Forman, Milda’s parents – a pushy, overprotective mother and an indifferent father, collapsed in front of the television – represent the young lovers projected into the future, as the romantic idealism of youth gives way to the glum pragmatism of middle age.”
I part company with Kehr only on that last observation, and not just because I think Forman’s view of the parents is more affectionate than appalled. It also seems to me that characterizing Andula and Milda as “the young lovers [filled with] the romantic idealism of youth” forgets that Milda is, if anything, more cynical than his parents – only able to (briefly) warm up to Andula as a person after he’s conquered her. And I also suspect that the glum pragmatism of Milda’s home, while undoubtedly a disappointment to Andula and a representation of the real world against her her own romantic idealism, is also more than she can probably hope for at this point. We have already heard that she does not get along with her mother, and at any rate, whether at her provincial factory or lost in the big city, she’s a long way from home. Listening in on a quarrel, the significant fact is not that they’re quarreling, but that she’s on the other side of the door, alone. Back in the workshop, or lying about her visit to friends in the dorm, it is not stifling domesticity which threatens her, but rather utter isolation and unhappiness which looms on the horizon.
These themes are reflected not just in the story, but the wall-to-wall music which fills the movie, a mixture of Eastern European swing and sixties pop, much of it delectably hummable. This loosely assembled score wonderfully lubricates the verite photography, loosely improvisational performances, and luminous close-ups, creating an impressionistic mood whose spell we can often fall under. Yet we never forget that these wisps of freedom, beauty, and truth exist within iron constraints, social and personal. The film opens with a delightfully infantile yet catchy ditty, crooned by a tone-deaf young lady, filled with Americanisms like “yeah-yeah-yeah” and “hooligan.” Then, in the last scene, a soft tune is softly strummed on the guitar, a melancholy melody suffusing everything onscreen with a sense of unfulfilled yearning and loneliness. The season of hope is over, and the romanticism embodied in that elegiac tune will probably die soon as well – but while it lasted it was charming, sweet, and perhaps even a little bit funny.
Seems like this is connected to the social realism you covered in the British New Wave essay. Sorry, I haven’t seem this, but I love The Fireman’s Ball from the director’s Czech period.
Not quite so much – it’s got the working-class milieu but in terms of tone it’s probably closer to Truffaut. Fireman’s Ball is also good.
I’ve only seen tjis film once and I really should take another peek at it considering I really like Forman’s work (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST was a big film in my house when I was growing up and me and my brothers loved it the first time we saw it together. AMADEUS is just, simply put, one of the greatest films of the 1980).
I feel that CUCKOO’s NEST is very reminiscent of this film in aot of ways, least of which is the spare visual style. In alot of eways it’s the sparcity of the framing that, along with the long silent passages of this film that alludes to social realism FRANK mentions in his comment above. I don’t wanna say there is a coldness to this film that I think is indicative of this period of independent film-making, but the characters do move in a world of lonliness and great emotiona irony that I think is a trademark of much of the work of budding film-makers of this period. In a kinda/sorta way, this movie reminds me of Schlesinger’s MIDNIGHT COWBOY, Scorsese’s WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR and Bergman’s PERSONA in that there is largeness to the world that just envelopes and swallows the smallness of charcters within a world that is changing both socially and emotionally. This is, for sure, a time capsule piece that, at the very least, should asct as a reminder of a time many of us lived through and one of great interest to those that didn’t.
I’m gonna have to catch up with this one again soon.
Terrific essay Joel….
I actually prefer this to Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, which are both excellent films, but this also helped me see those in a new light – as works of an auteur, rather than an accomplished Hollywood director-for-hire. All of Forman’s films, that I’ve seen, share an affection for mixing nonprofessional actors or acting styles with professionals, for a loose, warm style in photography and acting, and for eccentric faces and personalities (like a Fellini of more human dimensions). He also got to work with Ondricek for the first time in years when he shot Amadeus in Prague (he fled the country after the Soviets invaded, Ondricek stayed behind).
It’s funny that I ran into your piece on this movie: I’ve been thinking of “Jane Eyre,” a “girl’s book” that is an essential glimpse into a female mind–as is “Loves of a Blonde,” the sensitivity unimpeded by sentiment. And yes, what sticks with me is that excruciating night at the “boyfriend’s” house, the sad grin it forces out of us. A must-see for both genders.
What impresses me is the shift Forman is able to undergo from Andula’s perspective to a more objective, bemused one, and occasionally into the minds of other characters as well. He identifies with almost all the characters in that great dance sequence, one reason (aside from the formal achievements therein) it’s such a great scene. True confessions: I’ve not read Jane Eyre.
Wow, this is one of my favorite films of all time!!!!! I have shared it with many close friends over the years and have never heard a poor review of it. I highlight recommend Taking Off by Forman and Intimate Lighting By Ivan Passer (co-screenwriter of this one) for more exquisitely poetic melancholia!
Jason, I just saw Intimate Lighting for the first time (I don’t think it’s going to appear in this series, but don’t quote me on that – the only sure thing is that Chytilova, possibly with a double feature, will appear at the end of this Czech installment). I haven’t seen Taking Off, though I’ve been intrigued for a while (I think Forman still, with all his awards and acclaim, looks back bitterly on the fact that it was overlooked). I like the idea of your trilogy – the connection to Veronique hadn’t occurred to me (and it would make an interesting comparison, because the heroine(s) seem to have much more promising futures than Andula – at least until one of them drops dead – and accordingly, the Polish V lives in an explicitly post-Communist world as opposed to Andula) and I’m not familiar with Millennium Mambo – the only Hou I’ve seen is his Europeanized Red Balloon which is probably some kind of injustice!
See Millenium Mambo as soon as possible! It is my favorite filmas of the 2000s! Taking Off, which was recently generously provided to me on dvd by Allan, is up there with Forman’s best work, in my opinion, so his bitterness about its absence of attention is justified. In some ways it’s like an East Coast version of The Graduate, but with the threads of the stories following multiple characters instead of one. The structure of it is a but unconventional for an American film, even though the period in which it was made is arguably America’s finest, so maybe that has a bit to do with its lukewarm reception. Buck Henry is superb in it!!
I also keep Loves of a Blonde in an unofficial trilogy of “lost girl” masterpieces along with The Double Life of Veronique and Millenium Mambo. The last time I watched Veronique the connection to Loves of a Blonde seemed pretty strong to me, I’m pretty sure Kieslowski was a fan. There is also a humorous allusion to Loves of a Blonde in Jacque Demy’s wonderful picture The Model Shop.
Nearly all Eastern European “comedies” are tinged with an acute sense of melanchoia (as you astutely note here). It’s part of the wintry and philosophical underpinning of the culture. Yet as Joel projects here Foreman’s finest work are this film (and FIREMAN’S BALL) even if his later commercial work in American cinema is far better than the work of most supplanted emigating artists.
I am also a fan of INTIMATE LIGHTING and especially THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE, both broached here. Another magnificent entry in this memorable series of a film well deserving of this focused analysis.
I’ve been making my way through several Czechoslavakian films recently. Just saw the bizarre & eye-catching Cremator (which I know is one of your favorites), Intimate Lighting, am awaiting Black Peter on inter-library loan, and have Something Different by Vera Chytilova in the dock. Also watched All My Countrymen and several Jires; The Joke, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (which I just loved, much as was to be expected), and his first feature, The Cry, is on my computer now – it’s one I think may be the next in the Matinee series though I haven’t watched it yet and am not sure. Also our friend Leaves has helped me out a lot in both identifying and tracking down quite a few Czech (and, as he points out, Slovak) films not so easy to find.
I’ve been fascinated with the country and its cinematic output for years, since spending some time in Prague (visiting Barrandov Studios & FAMU and getting to attend talks with Jiri Barta, a great stop-motion animator, and Miroslav Ondricek, who is mentioned above) – but I’m only just catching up with a lot of it now.
And of course there’s still Marketa Lazarova, which made my Holy Grail years ago, but that’s kind of a different fish altogether methinks I will probably not be broached in this series (though hopefully I’ll use the opportunity to catch up with it).
Oh, and on the British New Wave note I recently acquired the Hollywood UK series which I look forward to watching. The first episode, called “Northern Lights” about the British New Wave is excerpted on the Billy Liar Criterion.
Fantastic news all-round Joel.
I am THRILLED that you loved CREMATOR and VALERIE, and patiently await your reaction to Vlacil’s MARKETA LAZAROVA, one of the greatest of all films!
Count me in as another large fan of THE CREMATOR. So mad at myself that I forgot to include that one in my Horror list.
Also MM, nice work here. I really want to add more but I haven’t seen this since 2000 or so, as I think this was just about the first Czech new wave film I ever saw… you’ve made me bump it to the top of my queue to revisit. I can’t wait.
One thing I do remember about it you capture in that top screencap; pouty, sleepy, depressive, alluring.
It was my first CNW too, I think it makes a great introduction though Fireman’s Ball probably gets talked about more often…
Have you seen UCHO (1970), MovieMan?
No, another one to add to the list…
the women outnumber the men 16 to one (not 19).
Ooooooh. 16, not 19. How tall are you, 5 foot 4 and and 7/8 or 5 foot 4 and 5/8?
Try reading the scholarly discourse you pedantic jerk.
beer, not water spills on the man’s back as he retrieves his wedding ring. did you even watch this film?
Hopeless pedant.
the pianist’s name is mila, not milda. OK, i’m done with this “reading.” and this is precisely the reason why i tell my students not to rely on anything they read on the internet.
Oooh, Mila, not Milda. (perhaps a single letter typo?) Take a hike and stop trying to assert yourself as some kind of an intellectual authority. I teach as well for a living. I feel sorry for your students, I must tell you. You are a pompous jerk. Joel Bocko is an excellent writer and a filmmaker, something you are apparently not on either count.
Gloria, “I” should be capitalized, as should the first word in each sentence.
Gloria Monti is………………….jealous.
Well then what pray tell are you doing on the internet and if the internet can’t be trusted who should trust your supposed corrections?