Loves of a Blonde

Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde (1965) was a breakthrough of the Czechoslovak New Wave and earned the future One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest director his first Academy Award nomination. Shot with non-professional actors and a documentary lightness, it captures the texture of ordinary socialist life with affection and quiet mischief.

Hana Brejchová plays Andula, the factory girl whose night with a casual young musician she mistakes for the start of something more. Forman builds the comedy from beautifully observed embarrassment — a trio of middle-aged reservists clumsily courting the town's young women at a dance, a long, mortifying scene of bickering parents — finding gentle absurdity and real tenderness in the gap between people's hopes and their circumstances.

The film travelled the world and helped define the Czech New Wave's blend of realism, humour and humane melancholy before the Soviet invasion of 1968 scattered its film-makers; Forman himself would soon decamp to America. Its influence on naturalistic comedy is considerable, and its sympathy for the small disappointments of everyday life remains disarming. Funny, bittersweet and acutely observed, Loves of a Blonde is one of the most endearing films of its remarkable movement. Restored and still widely shown, it remains among the most endearing achievements of the movement that the Soviet tanks of 1968 would soon disperse. Forman would soon decamp to America and win Oscars, but this early film preserves, intact, the gentle observational humour of the Czech New Wave.