The Firemen's Ball

{{Short description|1967 film}} {{Redirect|The Fireman's Ball|the TV film|The Fireman's Ball (1974 film)}} {{for|the French film|The Firemen's Ball (1948 film)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2020}} {{Infobox film | native_name = Hoří, má panenko! | name = The Firemen's Ball | image = The_Firemen's_Ball_Poster.jpg | caption = Theatrical release poster | director = Miloš Forman | writer = {{ubl|Miloš Forman|Jaroslav Papoušek|Ivan Passer|Václav Šašek}} | starring = Jan Vostrčil | producer = Rudolf Hájek<br>Carlo Ponti (uncredited) | music = Karel Mareš | cinematography = Miroslav Ondříček | editing = Miroslav Hájek | distributor = | released = {{film date|1967|12|15|df=y}} | runtime = 73 minutes | country = Czechoslovakia | language = Czech | budget = $65,000 }} '''''The Firemen's Ball''''' (or '''''Fireman's Ball'''''; {{langx|cs|'''Hoří, Má Panenko'''}}: "Fire, My Lady") is a 1967 Czechoslovak New Wave satirical comedy directed by Miloš Forman. It is set at the annual ball of a small town's volunteer fire department, and the plot portrays a series of disasters that occur during the evening. The film uses few professional actors – some characters are played by the firemen of the small town where it was filmed.<ref name="turnaround" /> By portraying the prevailing corruption of the local community and the collapse of even well-intentioned plans, the film satirized the communist system.

''The Firemen's Ball'' was the last film Forman made in his native Czechoslovakia before he relocated to the United States.<ref name="Criterion">{{cite web |url=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/187-the-firemen-s-ball |last=Hoberman |first=J. |title=The Firemen's Ball |website=The Criterion Channel |date=February 11, 2002 |access-date=January 4, 2026 }}</ref> It is also the first film he shot in color, as well as a milestone of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

==Plot==

The bumbling volunteer fire department in a small Czechoslovak town organizes a ball in the town hall, including a raffle and a beauty pageant. The firefighters also plan to present a small ceremonial fire axe as a birthday gift to their retired chairman, who has cancer (although they believe he does not know it himself as doctors were forbidden from revealing terminal illnesses to their patients). During preparations for the ball, a man sets a banner ablaze and finds himself dangling from the rafters of the town hall when his colleagues allow his ladder to fall.

Raffle prizes start disappearing: a cake, a bottle of cognac, a head cheese, a chocolate ball. Josef, one of the firefighters, sees the prizes are missing, but no one admits to knowing anything about the thefts; he eventually finds out that even his wife is involved. During the ball, a bickering committee of firefighters looks for candidates for the beauty contest, but they have difficulty finding enough of them. A man buys drinks for the committee members to persuade them to include his homely daughter among the candidates. An amorous couple paw each other under the raffle table.

After much trouble, seven (and eventually eight) contestants for the pageant are found. They are told that the winner will present the gift to the chairman after the contest, and the committee instructs them in how to pose and walk. However, when the contest begins, the girls flee from the hall and lock themselves in the bathroom. Consequently, the crowd starts dragging replacement candidates to the stage and a melee ensues. An old woman is crowned the winner and the audience cheers.

A siren sounds because the house of an old man, Mr. Havelka, is on fire. Everyone uses the opportunity to leave the town hall without paying for their drinks. With their fire engine stuck in the snow, the firefighters manage to save some furniture and animals from the house, but they are unable to do anything about the fire with only a few shovelsful of snow. A table is borrowed from Havelka and used to sell more alcohol to the crowd that is watching the fire.

To help Havelka, who has lost almost everything, people donate their raffle tickets. However, nearly all of the prizes have been stolen during the ball, leaving only a few low-value items. The firefighters announce they will turn off the lights to give the thieves an opportunity to return the prizes. In the darkness all of the remaining items are also stolen, and when the lights come back on, Josef is caught returning the head cheese his wife stole. The firefighters' committee retreats to discuss how to save the reputation of the department. They return to a now-empty hall, where only their retired chairman remains. The committee presents him the gift box and he gives a heartfelt speech thanking them, but when the box is opened, it turns out that the axe itself has also been stolen.

The next morning, outside in the snow, Havelka lies down in his bed next to the fireman set on guard beside the ruins of his home.

==Cast== {{cast listing| * Jan Vostrčil as Head of Committee * Josef Šebánek as Committee Member #2 * Josef Valnoha as Committee Member * František Debelka as Committee Member #1 * Josef Kolb as Josef * Jan Stöckl as Retired Fire Chief * Vratislav Čermák as Committee Member * Josef Řehořek as Committee Member #4 * Václav Novotný as Committee Member * František Reinstein as Committee Member * František Paska as Committee Member * Stanislav Holubec as Karel * Josef Kutálek as Ludva * Milada Ježková as Josef's wife }}

== Background == [[File:Firemansball.jpg|thumb|Film poster by Saul Bass]]

After the success of ''Loves of a Blonde'' (1965), Forman, along with fellow screenwriters Ivan Passer and Jaroslav Papoušek, could not concentrate on their follow-up screenplay and so went to the small north Bohemian town of Vrchlabí to hole up in a hotel and write.<ref name="Criterion" /> "One evening, to amuse ourselves, we went to a real firemen's ball," Forman recalled. "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."<ref name="Criterion" /><ref name="KVV" />

The movie was shot in a typical local Palace of Culture, "Na střelnici" in Vrchlabí. Most of the actors were not professional actors (e.g. Josef Šebánek, Milada Ježková). To shoot the natural sound of their voices it was necessary to have silence on-set, so during the actors' dialogue scenes the band merely pretended to play and the dancing couples wore wool socks or slippers.<ref name="AHH" /> According to Forman, it was Italian film producer Carlo Ponti's $65,000 that enabled the film to be shot in color.<ref name="Criterion" />

== Controversy == Forman has commented on the issue of whether his film should be seen as an allegory of the larger society of the time:

{{Cquote|I didn't want to give any special message or allegory. I wanted just to make a comedy knowing that if I'll be real, if I'll be true, the film will automatically reveal an allegorical sense. That's a problem of all governments, of all committees, including firemen's committees. That they try and they pretend and they announce that they are preparing a happy, gay, amusing evening or life for the people. And everybody has the best intentions... But suddenly things turn out in such a catastrophic way that, for me, this is a vision of what's going on today in the world.<ref name="hames" />}}

The film generated considerable controversy on its release. Among other things, fire companies across Czechoslovakia protested that the film was an attack on their integrity, to the extent that Forman and his team felt obliged to tour the country dispelling this literal reading.<ref name="hames2" /> The Czechoslovak Communist party members took exception to the film's cynical tone. However, the film became a big hit in Czechoslovak cinemas, selling over 750,000 tickets{{Citation needed|date=October 2024}}.

Carlo Ponti, the film's Italian producer, also took umbrage at the film and pulled his financing, leaving Forman to face a possible 10-years' imprisonment for "economic damage to the state". Forman drove from London to Paris to see Claude Lelouch, who had once promised he would buy international rights for any film Forman made, only to find out Lelouch was in Morocco at that time. By chance, Forman met with Claude Berri, who contacted François Truffaut, and after watching the film they both agreed to buy the international rights.<ref name="stories" /> Only the intervention of Truffaut saved the film and found it international distribution.<ref name="Ebert">{{cite web |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-firemens-ball-1968 |last=Ebert |first=Roger |title=The Firemen's Ball |website=RogerEbert.com |date=August 4, 2002 }}</ref>

Though the film did have a domestic release, and was shown in Czechoslovak cinemas in the reformist atmosphere of the Prague Spring, the film was subsequently banned after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact countries in 1968.<ref name="Criterion" /><ref name="Ebert" /><ref>{{Cite web|title=Revisiting The Firemen's Ball (Milos Forman, 1967) {{!}} UCLA Film & Television Archive|url=https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/blogs/archival-spaces/2019/08/30/revisiting-firemens-ball|access-date=2021-11-11|website=www.cinema.ucla.edu}}</ref>

== Reception == {{Rotten Tomatoes prose|91||32|The Firemen's Ball is an uproarious comedy of incompetence, mining laughs and sharp satire from an allegory that is amusing and distressing in equal measure.|ref=yes|access-date={{RT data|access date}}}}

Roger Ebert wrote, "Telling a seductively mild and humorous story about a retirement fete for an elderly fireman, the movie pokes fun at citizens' committees, the culture of thievery, and solutions that surrender to problems ... Forman is not making fun of his characters, but of the system they inhabit."<ref name="Ebert" />

==Awards== The film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 41st Academy Awards.<ref name="Oscars1969" /> It was also listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Festival de Cannes: The Fireman's Ball |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2699/year/1968.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120308225913/http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2699/year/1968.html |archive-date=2012-03-08 |access-date=2026-01-25 |website=www.festival-cannes.com |language=en}}</ref> but that festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.

==Home media== Arrow Films released the film on Blu-ray in the UK in 2015.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=16944|title=Arrow Video Announces September Releases|date=10 June 2015|work=Blu-ray.com}}</ref>

==References== {{Reflist|refs=

<ref name="AHH">Alois Humplík: Hoří má pananko – ve Vrchlabí, in: Kino (magazine), 5/1967</ref>

<ref name="KVV">Kusin, Vladimir V. (1971) ''The Intellectual origins of the Prague Spring: The Development of Reformist Ideas in Czechoslovakia'' 1956–67. A Study of Normalisation in Czechoslovakia 1968–1978. Edinburgh: Q Press. Page 136. </ref>

<ref name="Oscars1969">{{cite web|url=http://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1969 |title=The 41st Academy Awards (1969) Nominees and Winners |access-date=2011-11-15|work=oscars.org}}</ref>

<ref name="turnaround">{{cite book |first1=Miloš |last1=Forman |first2=Jan |last2=Novák |title=Turnaround |publisher=Faber and Faber |location=London |year=1994 |isbn=0-571-17289-X }}</ref>

<ref name="hames">Quoted in {{cite book |last=Hames |first=Peter |title=The Czechoslovak New Wave |year=2005 |publisher=Wallflower Press |location=London and New York |page=120 |isbn=1-904764-42-8 }}</ref>

<ref name="hames2">{{cite book |last=Hames |first=Peter |title=The Czechoslovak New Wave |year=2005 |publisher=Wallflower Press |location=London and New York |page=126 |isbn=1-904764-42-8 }}</ref>

<ref name="stories">{{cite book |title=Miloš Forman Stories |last=Liehm |first=Antonín J. |date=1975 |publisher=International Arts and Science Press |place=New York |pages=90–91 |isbn=0-87332-051-4 }}</ref> }}

==External links== * {{IMDb title|0061781}} * {{tcmdb title|id=74969}} * [https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/187-the-firemen-s-ball ''The Firemen's Ball''] an essay by J. Hoberman at the Criterion Collection

{{DEFAULTSORT:Firemens Ball, The}} Category:1967 black comedy films Category:Czechoslovak comedy films Category:Films directed by Miloš Forman Category:1960s Czech-language films Category:1967 Czechoslovak films Category:Films about firefighting Category:Czech black comedy films Category:Czech independent films Category:Films with screenplays by Ivan Passer Category:Films with screenplays by Miloš Forman Category:Films shot in the Czech Republic Category:1967 films Category:Films set in Czechoslovakia Category:Czechoslovak New Wave films