Oficiální web Miloše Formana

With “Loves of a Blonde” Milos Forman shifted from the spontaneous expression of “Black Peter” to a particularly riveting story set in both a small town and the city of Prague. “Loves of a Blonde” is a bittersweet film; it is bitingly tragic and simultaneously touching.  The film is not only about a trusting girl’s disappointment in love, it also offers a scathing characterization of society as a whole. 

The film starts by poking fun at the social engineering of a socialist regime that tries to solve the lack of single men in a small Czech town with a shoe industry called Zruc-upon-Sazava, by sending a troop of conscripts there. However, a large group of married middle-aged reservists are sent to Zruc-upon-Sazava by mistake. The reservists clumsily try to court the girls at a dance organized to introduce the two groups. This scene is one of the best examples of poetic embarrassment in the sixties. The trusting Andula resists the reservists´ sexual advances but she is seduced by a young pianist from an orchestra in Prague named Milda. One of the tragicomic highlights of the film is their love scene in which Milda repeatedly attempts to pull down the window’s blinds.

The naive girl travels to Prague based on Milda’s passing (and insincere) invitation.The story culminates with an absurd scene in a bedroom at Milda’s parents’ apartment. The father, mother and son all lay in one double bed and argue about what to do with the girl. Forman describes the scene: “It’s a tight fit. The old man wants to sleep; the son would like to get thrown out so he can join the girl on the couch, but the mother runs the show and won’t tolerate any such filthy ideas under her roof.“ This scene is one of the most sensitive and bitterest examples of Czech narrow-mindedness.

Forman puts his token emphasis on large scenes that feature mass groups of people by placing the camera in the position of a casual observer to capture a prevailing atmosphere. More than two and a half million filmgoers made “Loves of a Blonde“ the most popular film in Czechoslovakia. “Loves of a Blonde“ was also well received  by foreign intellectuals. In 2010 the movie was ranked #89 in Empire magazine´s “The 100 Best Films of World Cinema.”

• “I wasn’t married for the second time yet at that time, so I often walked aimlessly from one friend to another, from one pub to another. One day after midnight I went home to Vsehrdova Street by car and suddenly I saw a girl with a suitcase crossing the bridge. I stopped the car and offered to help her. I got to know that she had come to see a boy, whom she´d met in Varnsdorf a few days ago. However, as she found out, the address he had given her was false. She told me about the situation in Varnsdorf, which was then in the movies. Big textile factories, depopulated areas after the resettlement of Germans, many more girls outnumbered the boys. Zruc-upon-Sazava was the same; only the factory was new for that Czech region.”
• “I cast Jana’s sister, not to take revenge on my first wife (Czech movie star of the sixties, Jana Brejchova, editor’s note), as whispering tongues claimed, but primarily because I had known her very well and for a very long time, and I knew that she was talented. Jana was always closer to the intellectual world. Hana was more common and uncomplicated, maybe because she wasn’t so noticeably pretty. She had an amazing ability of free expression, but with the risk that she didn’t recognize the extent. However, Vlada Pucholt held her firmly in the rhythm of the scene, in a professional position.”
• “I never considered anyone but Vladimir Pucholt for our piano player. This great actor, who had tremendous artistic intuition, completely mistrusted his talent. I think this was because he had a very rationalist disposition and could never see, much less measure, the result of his acting.”

  “Was it good, Mr. Forman?” he asked me after every perfect shot.
  “It was excellent!”
  “Really?”
  “Really.”

  “He never believed me and all of us loved him.”

• “Shooting “Loves of a Blonde”, I learned that mixing professional actors and non-actors actually helped both groups, but you had to have actors who could stand up to the challenge of the natural behavior of the non-actors. It takes a great actor to blend into a scene with people who are being themselves. And that’s what Vladimir Mensik was.”
• “I remember those few months in Zruc-upon-Sazava as some of my sunniest days in the movie business. We had all the time we needed. We played billiards. We choked on laughter watching Pucholt fight his parents in the narrow double bed.”
• “ 'Loves of a Blonde' sold out in cinemas across Czechoslovakia and won me the Klement Gottwald State Award. The award from the first communist president of the land and a legendary boozer was more of an embarrassment than anything else. The only good thing about it was the fat envelope that came with the ribbon. It contained  20 000 CZK (800 EUR), nearly a year’s salary, and it went a little way to make up for the contempt that Ivan (Milos Forman’s close associate, scriptwriter and film director Ivan Passer, editor’s note) exhibited for all laureates who won this award.”