Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

elvircorhodzic LOVES OF A BLONDE is a romantic comedy drama film about love, provincialism and incident. Those three elements are in direct relations with the social and political situation in the former Czechoslovakia. Mr. Forman has put an emphasis on simplicity and naivety in relationships and a vain struggle for a youthful love, which is not realistic in socio-political terms.Andula is a working-class young woman, who living in a fading Czech factory town. The environment in which she lives is suffering from a chronic shortage of men. Andula, who is eager for love goes on an adventure with a young local rebel and a married forester. The factory supervisor belatedly realizes that the gender disparity is impairing morale and productivity, so he arranges for an army officer to organize military maneuvers near the town in order for the factory to sponsor a big dance, at which the workers can find male companionship among the soldiery. However, married middle-aged reservists come to their town. However, Andula meets Milda, a young handsome pianist, on a dance party. It seems that she finally found the love of her life... but...Mr. Forman has approached, in a subtle way, his protagonists, because of that, the clarity or pain on their faces look realistic. He has often played with a simple and naive emotions of a young girl, which in this case receive a kind of timeless value. Shades of gray, and working melancholy, which is mixed with a conservative and stubborn ambiance, must brings some kind of a conflict. The characterization, despite visible improvisation, is very good.Hana Brejchová (Andula) is a naive girl in an impossible mission. It's really hard to be loved. Vladimír Pucholt (Milda) is a shifty young man who knows what he wants. Well, maybe, he fell in love... someday. Milada Ježková (Milda's mother) and Josef Šebánek (Milda's father) are tragicomic. Well, these profiles were common in my country.A smile through tears can be bitter.

writers_reign This movie was made and released when Czechoslovakia was still a single country and still very much a part of the Communist bloc so that Westerners like myself with absolutely no experience of day-to-day living under a Communist regime (I have since visited East Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic but long after the Wall came down in 1989) may sometimes miss the more subtle nuances of movies like this, Closely Observed Trains, The Fireman's Ball, etc, being more or less obliged to compare them with the more familiar fodder from Hollywood, UK, western Europe. One thing that does come across powerfully is that the actors, both male and female, are almost without exception as drab as the landscape and as I know from personal experience Czech girls of today are as stunning as girls anywhere I can only assume that life under the Communists bleached all traces of glamour out of the people. This is an excellent and moving film but none of the twentyish girls, including the leading actress would be cast as love interest in even the most modest 'B' picture from Merton Park or Poverty Row. Having said that this remains a watchable and entertaining film.

chaos-rampant This is such an exquisite cinematic weave of feelings, I was taken aback. But only half of it is there, the rest you'll have to supply which is even better in a way. Films come into being after all in that space between what is there and the experience in the eye.But first. Watch it once straight through because it's funny as hell in that gentle way the Czech know so well, just light and bitter enough to be like getting tipsy on life, delighted at the tipsiness. It's well made and well acted, you can see why Milos Forman was quickly tapped by Hollywood.Watching it once, you'll have this as your template—a teenage girl's impressionable drift through male sexual whims, and bittersweet realization in the end of heartbreak every time. Now bring all these other things to it:The guys are only looking to get laid, this isn't about them.It's a story the blonde girl tells to her girlfriend using the photograph of a boy, both real and imagined. Knowing this, is knowing everything else including the seduction is her exploring by allowing herself to be explored. The gaffe with the bottle of wine sent by horny soldiers to the wrong table, the ugly ducklings instead of the pretty blonde. But it makes its way to the right one, and we have the two soldiers go after the two girls (but not the blondie), and that subplot abandoned with inviting glances.Now her seduction (remember, still a story she will tell) but we actually skip sex, and go straight to the intimacy and youthful joking around on the bed which is what she yearns for, connection. And as she leaves the room, she meets the ugly duckling coming back to her room after her parallel night with the soldier.The lecturing by a teacher on girls guarding a woman's honor, and she boards the first bus out of there. Is she mad? Looking for answers?The cut from her alone in a country road boarding the bus, to a dance floor in the city filled with young couples, to TV footage of dancing girls in the parents' home. Amazing storytelling, because it is not of the story but the air around the girl lifting her from that road to wait for him in his house.Her being 'locked' in the house, falling asleep to the mother's incessant nagging. Waking up again, now the boy is there but he's not who she would like him to be—she watches heartbroken through a peephole (a cinematic device) as the pettiness of family life is revealed.So this is wonderful. It ends with her telling this story better than it is.I would change a single detail—we'd never be shown who is in either of the two photographs.It would be about any of these girls dreaming up all we've seen. (we see them all asleep in the end) Sex safely explored inside the fantasy, and the fantasy both 'real' and imaginary, helter skelter so you wouldn't know where last day's glances end and the pillow book starts. The ugly duckling as the blonde. It can support all that and more, excellent, excellent stuff.In order to appreciate why this is special, watch another Czech film called Daisies (Sedmikrásky), more inventive on the surface, more irreverent on the same subject, but it doesn't hit deep. It has the images but not the life that gives rise to them, there are both here, and how.It's so good, it rivals Celine and Julie Go Boating on my list of great films, a similar film on the layered dreaming of a girl.

pagras Colleague Planktonrules finally noticed that the Emperor had no clothes! Actually, if you watch all Forman's movies filmed before his departure to USA, you can see that they stood and fell with the performances of several excellent actors (well, in reality, non-actors). Especially Vladimír Pucholt and Josef Šebánek were unforgettable, and Forman played a key role in discovering these natural-born comic geniuses. However, Forman's movies by itself were not worthy of any admiration and looked like pushing amateurish attempts with shabby script, smudged camera and miserable acting in supporting roles. Černý Petr (Black Peter), Lásky jedné plavovlásky (Loves of a Blonde) and Hoří, má panenko (The Firemen's Ball) are all "pseudo-artistic classics" that belong to this category. They are very, very different from his later work in USA, which shows that he realized he couldn't continue in this "tradition" - unless he wanted to discredit himself, of course.What I find especially fascinating, however, is the fact that Loves of a Blonde have 16 comments on IMDb.com, and The Firemen's Ball even breathtaking 18 comments! At the same time, IMDb.com lists many great Czech movies - e.g. works of Karel Zeman, Czech fairy-tale classics, children's movies, or legendary comedies of Oldřich Lipský - in which you struggle to find one or two. This is a bizarre situation that creates a very false idea about the quality of Czech film production (which was really admirable especially during 60's and 70's), and YouTube obviously didn't help to improve it much. In any case, praising movies like The Firemen's Ball or Loves of a Blonde as jewels of Czech cinema - only because they are early works of a director, who later succeeded in USA - makes me deeply ashamed.