Loves of a Blonde

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

Hana Brejchová plays Andula, the factory girl who mistakes a night with a casual young musician for the start of something more. Forman builds the comedy out of beautifully observed embarrassment: three middle-aged reservists clumsily courting the town's young women at a dance, a long and mortifying scene of bickering parents. He finds gentle absurdity and real tenderness in the gap between what people hope for and what their circumstances allow.

The film travelled the world and helped define the Czech New Wave's mix of realism, humour and humane melancholy before the Soviet invasion of 1968 scattered its film-makers. Forman himself soon left for America, where he would go on to win Oscars. Its influence on naturalistic comedy is considerable, and its sympathy for the small disappointments of everyday life is still disarming. Restored and still widely shown, Loves of a Blonde is among the most endearing films of a remarkable movement, and it preserves intact the gentle observational humour that the tanks of 1968 would soon disperse.