Great Balls of Fire: An Analysis of The Firemen’s Ball (1967)
Directed by Miloš Forman against the backdrop of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, The Firemen’s Ball has been widely praised for its satirical representation of the political field of Czechoslovakia at the time. Forman has consistently stated that he never intended the film to have such depth, but the offense to the communists was real and his film was banned from showing in the bloc for many years. Nevertheless, The Firemen’s Ball was nominated for an Academy Award and remains one of the most prominent examples of the Czechoslovak New Wave era of film. This essay will examine the cultural impact of The Firemen’s Ball by analyzing the cultures and individuals from which it stemmed.
Miloš Forman was born in Čáslav, in what is now the Czech Republic, in 1932 to Jewish parents. Forman was just six years old when the Nazi regime began its occupation of Czechoslovakia, and was only twelve years old when the regime and its use of concentration camps left him orphaned. Forman states that the last time he saw his father, he was pulled out of his primary school class to meet with him between two large members of the Gestapo. His father told him that everything would be fine and that he would come back, but he never did. Forman remembers his final encounter with his mother as taking place within their home in the middle of the night, when the Gestapo arrived for her.
He was raised by family friends and two of his uncles and eventually settled into a boarding school after the war. The school was established for children orphaned in the war, but most of the students came from established and wealthy families that had the ability to donate generous sums to the school in exchange for admission. Forman had an interest in a career as a theatrical producer from the time he was young, and met many future filmmakers and his future colleagues during his time in school. He moved to Prague to study screenwriting, and enjoyed a successful career as a director in Czechoslovakia until the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 encouraged him to pursue his options in the United States.
The Warsaw Pact invasion was not the first sign of difficulty in Czechoslovakia after the war. After the death of Stalin in 1953, Czechoslovakia underwent a very slow process of de-Stalinization. The same year, a USSR-approved Communist politician, Antonín Novotný, became the effective leader of Czechoslovakia. Arts and media industries faced strict censorship under the Stalin regime, and although these standards loosened a bit during the de-Stalinization programmes of 1956, Novotný’s authoritarian leadership style prevented this form of free speech from ever fully materializing while he remained in power. In 1960, Novotný replaced the national constitution with a blatantly Communist edition. Despite Novotný’s best efforts, he could not prevent the cultural revolution happening right under his nose.
The Czechoslovak New Wave, sometimes referred to as the Czechoslovak film miracle, was a movement of filmmakers in the 1960s that pushed the boundaries of what was socially acceptable by creating films of subjects previously banned under Stalin. Miloš Forman was at the forefront of this movement. Due to the location of prestigious film schools and state media headquarters around Prague, the vast majority of Czechoslovak New Wave films were recorded in the Czech language as opposed to Slovak. Like the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s, the Czechoslovak New Wave focused on experimentation and rejection of traditional film styles. However, the Czech filmmakers emerged in a Communist world, with vast state funding from a state controlled media. While this meant that Czech filmmakers often had more access to the necessary components of a successful film, which is reflected in the stronger narrative structure that films of this era present, it also meant that offences to the state were far more direct. This was not entirely sheer coincidence; many films of the era included biting commentary on the state of communist politics in Czechoslovakia, but Forman maintained that this was never his intention when creating The Firemen’s Ball.
The film was only Forman’s third, but in the four years since the release of his first, Black Peter (1963), he had already been nominated for an Academy Award. After the success of his Oscar-nominated second film, Loves of a Blonde (1965), Forman and his fellow screenwriters, Ivan Passer and Jaroslav Papoušek, decided to take a hotel room in the small town of Vrchlabí to focus on the creation of its sequel. According to Forman, the inspiration for an entirely new movie came “one evening, to amuse ourselves, [when] we went to a real firemen's ball. What we saw was such a nightmare that we couldn't stop talking about it. So we abandoned what we were writing on to start this script”.
The Firemen’s Ball follows a volunteer fire department in a small Czech town that plans to host a ball in the local community center for the townspeople, complete with a beauty pageant, a raffle, and the presentation of a ceremonial fire ax to the retired chairman of the department, who many believe is suffering from a bout of cancer that is of yet unknown to the chairman himself. While these objectives are seemingly straightforward, they prove to be difficult for the firemen. As the ball begins, the firemen task themselves with what seems to be the most pressing: selecting candidates for the beauty pageant. They struggle to find enough women they deem beautiful amongst the partygoers, and resist the urge and bribes to include a larger woman. While the firemen are struggling with this predicament, the raffle prizes steadily go missing amongst the thieving partygoers and none of the firemen are able to recover them. One fireman even finds that his wife is among the thieves. When the beauty pageant contestants are finally selected, the women protest and refuse to participate by locking themselves in the bathroom. The crowd determines a set of replacement candidates and uses force to get them onstage.
Almost immediately after beginning, the firemen’s siren starts wailing, alerting all to a burning house a short distance away. In the excitement, the partygoers leave without paying their tabs and stand outside to watch the burning house. The firemen scramble, but their truck gets lodged in the snow, which makes it impossible to extinguish the burning house down the street in time. The old man, the occupant of the burning house, stands with the partygoers as he watches his home burn to the ground. He is in his sleepwear and freezing, so one fireman suggests he stand closer to the burning house for warmth. The firemen are able to save a few pieces of furniture, but the vast majority of the man’s belongings are destroyed. In an effort to support him, the partygoers donate all of their raffle tickets to the man. Upon presentation, it is discovered that most of the raffle prizes have been stolen. The firemen encourage everyone to return what they stole in a moment of blackness, but when the lights come back on the prize table is cleared instead. Unable to further help the man, the firemen continue on to the presentation of the ceremonial fire ax, only to discover upon presentation that the ax has also been stolen.
While the summary may clearly demonstrate the humour of the film, it is actually portrayed much more subtly. There are no jokes or laughing characters; everything in the film was intended to be natural. No famous or even experienced actors were included, and the majority of the firemen were played by actual local firemen. To achieve better sound quality and amplify the understated comedy within the script, the ‘partygoers’ danced in socks and the set remained in silence while filming to capture the natural sound of the actors’ voices. It mirrors a social documentary in the sense that it becomes increasingly more profound and visually artistic as it unfolds, which mimics the transition from a comedy to a tragicomedy.
However, the film is one of constant dialectical tone. Even in scenes featuring long drawn out arguments, the characters and especially the firemen themselves maintain a sense of chivalry and politeness despite the ridiculous circumstances. No voices are raised and no climax is reached; there is no conflict and no resolution. The closest thing to a climax within the film was the moment one fireman was discovered returning a large cheese that he had stolen from the prize table, only to faint from embarrassment. The other firemen are quick to disapprove of their comrade, and their leader firmly states that he would allow no impulse to be honest to undermine the dignity of his institution.
In a way, the film was a representation of the communist society it was produced in. The depicted officials seem to care more about the social importance of their uniform than their actual job of saving lives. Everything planned for the evening in question went wrong and the firemen proved themselves to be incapable of dealing with the unplanned. Their priorities were things that could be publicly displayed to bring them external validation, like treating other officers with respect or granting the man who lost his home the rest of the raffle tickets onstage. The firemen served as a reflection of a communist society because they focused on appearance. According to one critic, this demonstrates “less the violence and absolute control of the post-Stalinist system than its complete cynicism. That is to say, it’s not totalitarianism (understood as a system in which every aspect of life is completely regulated and controlled by the State and the Party, whose ruthlessness would belie the underlying ideals that they claim to respect), but rather a generalized state of venality, pettiness, and favoritism: a condition that (in the words of Kafka) ‘turns lying into a universal principle.’ Forman’s achievement is to create an aesthetic rendition of this condition, without offering an apology for it, but also without even the slightest hint of heavy-handed moralizing.”
The film was deemed controversial from the moment it was released. The state communist party detested the cynical tone of the film, and fire departments all over Czechoslovakia found deep offense in the film’s portrayal of them. Local firemen were so offended that Forman felt compelled to travel around the country to dispel the literal interpretation of the film. Nonetheless, the film was a box office success in Czechoslovakia, selling more than 750,000 tickets. However, the film almost never reached the screen. Carlo Ponti, the Italian producer of the film, pulled his financing from the project after viewing the final production. This left Forman in a considerable predicament, for if he were unable to come up with the money to cover the cost of the production, he faced up to ten years in prison for economic damage to the state. This led Forman to frantically drive through Europe in search of those who had once promised him their support. Although his search for former friends proved to be fruitless, by chance he met two French directors that enjoyed his production enough to buy the film’s international rights.
The dry comedy of the film has only aided its success. It followed in the Czech literary comic tradition of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk (1921-23), the theme of which explored the fight of the little man against a larger institution of tyranny and oppression. The Firemen’s Ball continues this theme by focusing on the cracks within the tyrannical institution before introducing us to the little man oppressed by their actions, in this case the old man that lived across the street from the firehouse and still lost his home to a fire. The success of the film could also be attributed to the fact that this theme could describe a large variety of social systems and institutions the world over.
The Firemen’s Ball was released to a changing social system. Less than a month after its premiere, Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which made him the de facto ruler of the country. His slogan was “socialism with a human face”, which seemed to help him enact the liberal reforms his predecessor, Novotný, had so aggressively prevented. Dubček lifted censorship of the media, which only fueled the Czechoslovak New Wave movement in Czechoslovakian filmography. While directors and citizens may have praised Dubček, his liberalisation reforms caused significant tension within the communist party throughout the bloc. While he advocated for the freedom of media, travel, and speech, as well as the right to vote and a partially decentralised economy, communist leaders beyond his borders quietly sought a resolution. The Prague Spring, as this period of liberalisation came to be known, lasted about eight months before that resolution came into play. At the end of August 1968, five of the seven Warsaw Pact countries (Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Hungary) invaded Czechoslovakia. As tanks and soldiers flooded the border, a flight from Moscow with additional soldiers and artillery secured the Ruzyne International Airport in Prague. 500,000 troops were involved in the attack, which took the lives of 137 Czech and Slovak people. Dubček was arrested and the Prague Spring came to an end as the communist party strengthened its local authority. In the following days, nearly 70,000 citizens emigrated, with the total number eventually resting closer to 300,000. Forman was among the initial numbers. His home country was attacked by communists less than a year after the release of what has been widely described as his open criticism of communist governance.
While Forman claims the film was never intended to have such a direct allegorical meaning, The Firemen’s Ball serves as a time capsule preserving visual details of the sociopolitical context in which it was made. Forman lost both of his parents to the Holocaust, and attended a school for orphans with many people who bribed their way in. It should not be a stretch to assume that Forman felt a sense of hypocrisy from the governing body that was intended to protect and serve its people. When the strict censorship rules of the Stalin era gradually decreased in number and severity, Forman was one of many to use this newfound freedom to simply express their own experiences. It is interesting to note that less than a year after the release of this film, Forman fled Czechoslovakia in the days surrounding the Warsaw Pact invasion. This act, when combined with the interpreted allegorical meaning of The Firemen’s Ball, demonstrates that Miloš Forman did not feel protected by his government. From a time and place of such political unrest, Forman has gifted future audiences with the ability to see and understand how disorganization on any level of government can negatively impact the people it has sworn to serve for the greater good.
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