Dreadfully Boring

A different way of telling a story

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The Firemen's Ball is a pretty short movie - less than 80 minutes in fact, maybe just at 70 - and it's been several years since I've seen it in full. But so much of it is still fresh in my mind, it speaks to the enduring power and weird comedy that Forman put together. I remember there was dancing, and also a lot of pointed commentary about Communism. The basic premise is that a big party for an 86 year old ex-boss is happening one night, but there are things going wrong: people aren't as beautiful as they should be for a Beauty pageant, and prizes are missing for a lottery.But what's so memorable about the movie is that it's not really about any plot. Incidents just... happen in the movie, but they're all building to a big something that will happen... or maybe might not happen. It's all a big indictment about a society that wishes one thing and just cannot deliver, at all. But it's also funny, very funny, because of how the characters want and wish and act and are so wrong-headed in how they think things will work out. The air around it has a bit of sadness to it too, but it comes from people who have lived through this through generations (and at the time the Czech Republic didn't have nearly as many freedoms as those in the West).

From director Milos Forman (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Man on the Moon), this film was highly recommended to me by the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and being admirable about the director I was interested to see a film in his native Czechoslovakian language, the last before going to America. Basically in a small Czechoslovak town the volunteer fire department are organising a ball in the town hall, with a lottery and a beauty contest included, this is also to celebrate the birthday of the honorary chairman who has cancer, but they don't know if he knows that, and they will present him with a small ceremonial fire axe. As the ball gets underway the fire-fighter committee members have not done the best planning for the beauty contest, so they have quickly got together eight candidates to compete for the prize, it is only after they have been drinking too much alcohol that one of the fathers gets them to accept his obese daughter. The lottery of the ball also suffers problems when food and drink as prizes start disappearing from the table, fire-fighter Josef (Josef Kolb), unaware that his wife is one of those stealing, tries to get the stolen prizes back, without success. Eventually enough women have been found to compete in the beauty contest, and the winner they are told will present the gift to the honorary chairman, but the women all lock themselves in the bathroom and refuse to take part, so the committee are forces to find another bunch of candidates to put on stage. Soon though everyone is running out of the hall, drinks consumed being unpaid for, because the siren sounds because the house of an Old Man (Frantisek Svet) is on fire, but snow is causing the fire engine to get stuck, so they are unable to put out the fire, only to save furniture from the house. The fire fighters decide to help the old man by letting him get all the prizes in the lottery, but almost all of them, besides the smaller and less valuable ones, have been stolen, everyone is told to bring back whatever they have taken, but in a moment of darkness the rest are taken also. So that their reputation will be saved the fire committee members move back stage to discuss the situation at the ball, but they return to see everyone has gone, apart from the honorary chairman, and when they want to give him the axe in the gift box this has been stolen as well. Also starring Jan Vostrcil as Head of Committee, Frantisek Debelka as Committee Member #1, Josef Sebánek as Committee Member #2, Josef Valnoha as Committee Member #3, Josef Rehorek as Committee Member #4, Vratislav Cermák as Committee Member #5, Václav Novotný as Committee Member #6, Frantisek Reinstein as Committee Member #7, Frantisek Paska as Committee Member #8, Ladislav Adam as Committee Member #9, Jan Stöckl as Retired Fire Chief, Stanislav Holubec as Karel and Josef Kutálek as Ludva. You do not need to have knowledge of Czech politics to enjoy most of this film, it portrays the time setting of the 1950's pretty well, it mocks the incompetence and lack of manners of the characters, the comedy parts mostly come from the moments of idiocy as a celebratory event goes wrong, it is a likable political satire. Very good!

"The Firemen's Ball" was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture (oddly, for 1969--despite debuting in 1967) and all I have to say about this is that it must have been an off year! Now the eventual winner of this award, the Russian version of "War and Peace", was truly an incredible and deserving picture...but I just can't see how such a slight and seemingly inconsequential film as "The Firemen's Ball" could have been nominated. Now I am NOT saying it's a bad film...but it seemed relatively ordinary.The film is a comedy of errors for the fire department. This group of men (mostly elderly guys who look incapable of saving anything) kept experiencing disaster after disaster during the course of this awful evening. Some were unavoidable, many were due to the larcenous neighborhood of this awful little town and many were due to the ineptitude of the department. I could say more about what happened, but this would spoil the film--which is mostly fun, though it has some slow moments.As far as the style of this film by Milos Forman goes, it reminded me a bit of the Italian neo-realist films--with lots of ordinary looking people who did not appear to be actors. This wasn't bad, though...I just think the script was not exceptionally great. Some nice moments, sure, but also some that were too painful and too drawn out to make this anything other than a curious and occasionally funny comedy. Also, for me, the film might have worked a bit better had I liked the people in the film or the town. By the end of the picture, I really found them all to be pretty awful.By the way, this film was banned because of its anti-bureaucratic slant. It seemed that the film made the Czechoslovakian (and therefore the Russian) government look inept and the town was anything but a workers' paradise.

I liked this movie, but then I like slower moving movies with actors that look like real people. This film gives real historical insight into a communist society, including how artists such as Forman tried to get a message through without being completely censored. I have a question about this film, however. I keep reading and hearing that this film uses no professional actors, and the firemen you see are the real firemen from a small town in Bohemia. However, several of these actors were also in Loves of a Blonde, which was an earlier film. So, I surmise that some of the firemen were the real firemen, and others were actors he had used before. This film is well worth seeing. I laughed aloud several times, and smiled through all of it. He has a gift for the small moments of humor and pathos in anyone's life, and it is quite a humorous comment on Czechoslovakian communist society.