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Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

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.

With still having strong memories about being caught completely by surprise from Milos Forman's far better than expected 1984 epic Amadeus,I was thrilled to recently discover that a fellow IMDb'er had shared a link to a Youtube page of an early Forman movie from a film movement that I had recently been hearing quite a bit about called the Czech New Wave,which lead to me excitingly getting ready to surf the wave for the first time.The plot:Fearful over their being not enough boys for girls to fall in love for in his village,due to their only being one man to every 16 women in the village,a local businessman decides to do a deal with a military general,which will allow for restless soldiers to pay a visit to the town,in the hope that they end up becoming romantically involved with the residents.Attending a late night party with her dormitory friends,Andula tells her friends to ignore the advances that are getting made to them by a group of old,worn down soldiers.Leaveing her friends behind on the watchful gaze of the army men,Andula secretly pays a visit to a guy called Milda,who along with having played with played in a band earlier in the night,is also someone who Andula is starting to develop a real crush for.Half-heartedly accepting Milda's invitation for her to pay a visit to his room,so that Milda can read her palms,Andula soon begins to find out what direction her palm lines,and her life are heading in.View on the film:For the relationship between Andula (played by a cute,wonderfully uncertain Hana Brejchová) and Milda (played by a very good,manipulative Vladimír Pucholt),the screenplay by director Milos Forman and co- writer's Jaroslav Papousek, Ivan Passer and Václav Sasek use Andula's wish for the relationship to work as a sly way to include some subtle commentary on the communist regime of the time,with Andula working in a shoe shop factory making identical pares of shoes,being connected to the owner of the business trying to get all of the women of the village to settle down with men from the country's old,rusting military.Continuing on the films theme in his directing style,Forman and cinematography Miroslav Ondrícek show in stark black & white everything that Andula is up against in her desire not to conform,from Andula's village looking like a wasteland,and Forman placing the viewer in Andula's corner when a vote is taking at her dormitory for no boys to be allowed in the building.Forman also expertly reveals the full Horror's of what Andula is going against,when after making her first ever visit out of the village to see Milda's parents,Andula is met by the hard stare of Milda's mum,who openly tells Andula that she does not trust any outsiders.

'Lasky jedne plavovlasky', from 1965, fully breathes the excellence Czech films are renowned for.However, understanding this film requires knowledge about everyday life in the Communist Czechoslovakia of 1965. Which is complete history by now, and must be hard to understand for those born after the Communist era.In the Communist societies of Europe the state dictated where your job was. The margins to influence this decision were small or non-existent. For many working class-women this meant a lifelong condemnation to some drab provincial town. Being married to an overworked, insensitive husband who often took refuge to alcohol.So it's not surprising that many young women went to extremes to avoid such a future. Having sex with every man that might get them out was among these; all this happened when the pill did not exist and condoms were clumsy & crude, if available.Such a desperate urge makes the backbone of 'Lasky jedne plavovlasky'. Apart from that, there can be only praise for its acting, its setting, its psychology and its shooting. No doubt this film should rank among the greatest, if not for its subject: Communism isn't something people like to remember.

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.