After learning that The Firemen's Ball was "banned forever" in Czechoslovakia shortly after it was released toward the end of 1967 and hastened director Milos Forman's decision to relocate to Hollywood, where he went on to accomplish much bigger and better things, I expected to see something overtly provocative and scandalous. The old Criterion DVD cover, featuring a nubile woman pulling up her dress and exposing her bosom and undergarments, while an exasperated official in the background wipes his brow, certainly portends the kind of situations that would make the authority figures of any sufficiently repressive society blush. Forman's previous film Loves of a Blonde was rather frank for its time in expressing a nonchalant openness regarding sexuality, especially from a woman's perspective, so further exploration of such territory certainly seemed likely going into the film. But after giving a couple spins to this brief (73 minutes) and spontaneous-feeling ensemble comedy, I was surprised to see that in actuality, it's just an extended sketch that in a rational world would be regarded as little more than a genteel, mildly satirical nudge that tweaks mid-level provincial authorities for resorting to platitudes in place of substance and calls them to account for ordinary hypocrisies that are typically necessitated by being in charge.
The fact that the Czechoslovakian censors (or at least, those political influencers to whom they answered) took such offense at this slightly barbed slapstick as to drive the creative talent behind it out of the country and suppress the film from ever being shown again until decades later, after the government had been overthrown, tells me all I need to know about the fragility of their ideology and the chronic insecurity that must have plagued them as they went about their work. There's nothing in The Firemen's Ball, thematically speaking, that isn't also touched upon in pretty much any of the films found in the Eclipse Series' Pearls of the Czech New Wave box set that was the subject of a podcast I recorded with my friend Trevor Berrett this past summer. Indeed, if Forman hadn't gone on to establish his fame as a two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Director (for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus), I think this film might have wound up fitting quite comfortably alongside the six other titles packaged up in that collection. The humor and staging of this film feels like it's cut from the same cloth as A Report on the Party and Guests, which also relies on a big feast as its focal point for taking potshots at the inherent weakness and corruption of the prevailing governmental system. It helps a bit that The Firemen's Ball is shot in color, and the plot device is handled more deftly here as a situation that could actually happen than in the highly allegorical premise of a festival set up in the woods in the earlier film. Then again, A Report... itself was also banned and landed its director Jan Nemec in plenty of hot water, so I suppose that Forman should have known what kind of response this film would expect.
Not that I fault him in the slightest for making The Firemen's Ball exactly the way that he did. In fact, I applaud him for pouncing on the inspiration that he and his collaborators apparently felt when they attended an actual firemen's ball and used their experiences and observations as material for their next film. The story here is profoundly simple. The citizens of a small and utterly unremarkable Czech village gather together one evening to enjoy an annual ceremony combining good food, music and dancing and recognition of the local civic leaders who reputedly keep their neighbors safe, but really spend more time debating the minutiae of honorary protocols and establishing informal pecking orders of who is more or less esteemed by the town grandees. The occasion of this particular evening is to bestow an award on an elderly gentleman who spent most of the past few decades as the chief of the fire brigades, and along with that, there's to be a lottery that will serve as a fundraiser to support all the decent and charitable causes usually associated with such events.
Upon such a simple construct the minimalist plot rests, and of course it doesn't take too long before the best laid plans start to spiral out of control. We get the first hints of the chaos that will soon overwhelm in the very opening scene, when a cake donated for the lottery drawing is seen to have vanished from the serving dish it was placed upon, and a young man propped up on a ladder is left dangling for a minute while his elders fuss and fume at each other down on the floor, arguing about who is responsible to locate the missing dessert.
That frustrating (and highly amusing) exchange serves notice to the viewer that a full litany of similarly petty disputes are about to unravel over the next hour or so. We see attendees at the ball engage in all sorts of different conflicts, as the men running the event seek to arrange a hastily gathered beauty pageant, spouses, lovers and parent-child duos quarrel with each other, tempers flare and dignity is compromised. The cast, as far as I can tell, is made up of entirely non-professional actors, of the sort who have practically no expectation of ever appearing in another film again, and for that quotidian realism, I'm deeply grateful that a film like The Firemen's Ball was not only made, but crafted with sufficient quality to gain a popular audience and stand the test of time to the point that we're still watching the movie today. It's easy to dismiss or overlook the value of a film like this simply as a cultural document of an obscure little moment in time, but I relish the faces and the ordinariness of the folks I see carousing on screen. They're often rather funny, but that's assuming one is in the right mood to endure small-minded shouting matches for the sake of art and free cultural expression. I laughed out loud on several occasions; my wife, on the other hand, emerged at the tail end of the program feeling pretty irritated at this parade of obtuse individuals, all of whom seemed totally incapable of resolving any conflict constructively or taking any steps to engage with their adversaries in a way that promoted wisdom and understanding. So this may not be a film that pays dividends to all viewers, let me just toss in that caveat.
Of course, Forman's intention was indeed to emphasize the stubbornness and self-absorption of not just those in charge, but really all of us, so much of the time anyway, when the lights are turned off or at least we're reasonably confident that nobody is actively scoping us out, so we can do the greedy conniving things we do when others aren't looking with only the gossamer constraints of conscience holding us back from full barbarism and hijacking of the public good. The story moves us quickly through two main segments, as the ballroom antics get disrupted about fifty minutes in by an actual conflagration that gives our protagonists a chance to show their fire-fighting skills (or utter lack thereof). Though the blaze is played to comedic affect, it's never totally overlooked that a man's home and possessions are being consumed, and that underlying note of compassion and regret might have actually been the last straw that made the authorities intolerant of Forman's message. His satire may have exposed the fact that the Czechoslovakian government, like many authoritarian systems in that era and region, had proclaimed more - much more - than it could deliver, and the men running the system simply didn't like being called out on the emptiness of their promises. Still, their harsh crackdown on dissenting voices like Forman's only made them look more ignorant, petty and ridiculous than any of the flustered and pompous men in fire brigade uniforms on the screen, who were, after all, just victims of their pride and vanity. To ban a film of this modest ambition and subsequently exclude the artists who created it from doing their work freely and openly speaks of a deeper corruption and venality than Forman and his colleagues probably ever intended to expose or challenge.
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