The Firemen’s Ball

The Firemen's Ball (1967) was Miloš Forman's last Czech film before his move to America, a small comedy that doubled, unmistakably, as political satire. Shot in colour with the town's actual residents, it earned an Academy Award nomination and was promptly "banned forever" by the Czechoslovak authorities after the Soviet crackdown of 1968.

The story is slender: a volunteer fire brigade's gala falls into chaos as raffle prizes are pilfered and a beauty contest comes apart. In Forman's hands it becomes a deadpan allegory of bureaucratic incompetence and collective self-deception under socialism. He directs with affectionate precision, letting the non-actors' faces and fumbling carry the humour without ever sneering at them, so that the film works as gentle human comedy and as pointed critique.

The political reading nearly sank it before it was finished. Offended functionaries took the firemen's bungling personally, and only the intervention of an Italian producer, Carlo Ponti, kept the production afloat. Banned at home, it became a touchstone for the whole Prague Spring generation. The Firemen's Ball is brief, sly and bittersweet, a single disastrous evening standing in for the failures of an entire system, told with a smile that never quite hides the sting. Its mix of affectionate comedy and subversion has kept programmers coming back to it, and it was Forman's farewell to the cinema of his homeland.