Loves of a Blonde (), also known as A Blonde in Love, is a 1965 Czechoslovak romantic comedy-drama film directed by Miloš Forman that follows a young woman, Andula, who has a routine job in a shoe factory in provincial Czechoslovakia, and her attempts at forging a romantic relationship.
Forman based his story on an incident from his past and the filmmakers created a realistic look and feel by filming on location in a small Czech town with a shoe factory, utilizing a largely non-professional cast, relying on a considerable amount of dialogue improvisation, and employing documentary-style cinematographic techniques.
Upon its release, Loves of a Blonde was popular in its home country and was shown at some major film festivals, where it garnered a number of nominations and awards. Critical response was largely positive, although some reviewers were less enthusiastic than others. The film is now considered one of the most significant examples of the Czech New Wave, a movement which took advantage of a temporary relaxation of totalitarian control over creative artists to use cinema as a means to explore new narrative strategies while making pointed critiques of social and political conditions behind the Iron Curtain. Loves of a Blonde was nominated for the 1966 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Plot Andula, a working-class young woman, lives in a fading Czech factory town where women outnumber men 16–1. One night, she and a fellow shoe-factory-worker friend lie in bed in their dormitory, discussing the ring given to Andula by her boyfriend Tonda and gossiping about her flirtatious encounter with a forest ranger.
Realizing that the gender disparity is impairing morale and productivity, the factory supervisor arranges for an army officer to organize military maneuvers near the town. The factory will sponsor a dance, at which the workers can find male companionship among the soldiery. Anticipation runs high on both sides, with the girls expecting to meet young men, while the recruits, many of whom are actually middle-aged reservists, out-of-shape and already married, look forward to a night of seduction.
The night of the party is a disappointment for some members of both groups; Andula and her friends are repulsed by the soldiers, whom they call "old buffers," and three reservists are so nonplussed by the situation that they commit various faux pas, like sending a bottle of wine to the wrong table and dropping a wedding ring that one of them is trying to hide, only to watch it roll across the floor and land at the feet of the women who had received the bottle. For these people, the mixer is a flop, with the girls retiring to the lavatory to devise a way to escape their pursuers and the reservists arguing with each other over expenses and speculating on the necessity of going to the woods to have sex. For others, however, the dance is a success.
Andula strikes up a flirtation with Milda, the pianist of the band providing the music. He reads her palm and instructs her in how to rebuff unwanted advances with a kick in the shins. After the party, she has sex with Milda.
Although Andula hears nothing from Milda after their night together, she still expects to reunite with him shortly, so she breaks off with Tonda, who storms the dormitory demanding his ring back. After listening to a speech by the housemother on the virtues of fidelity and commitment, she packs up her suitcase and arrives on Milda's doorstep in the big city, ready to resume their romance. Milda is not home, and she meets his parents, who have never heard of Andula and do not know what to do with her. Milda comes home late, and after an evening of tension and uncertainty, it is decided to put her up for the night on the sofa, requiring Milda to climb into bed with his parents to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Andula, kneeling outside the door of their bedroom, overhears the family squabbling. When it becomes clear to her that she is not valued in the least, Andula starts crying and, the next morning, returns to her home. She tells her friends about her "wonderful" trip to the capital and how nice Milda's parents were to her, especially his father, and later returns to work at the factory.
Cast
Production
Background
Miloš Forman's first feature film Černý Petr (Black Peter) was released in 1964 and was not viewed favorably by Czech governmental authorities until it was selected for competition at that year's Locarno Film Festival, where it won the top prize, thereby gaining the approval of Czechoslovakia's communist bureaucracy and making it possible for Forman to pursue further projects with relative freedom. Unsure of what the next project should be, Forman recalled an experience he had had driving around Prague late one evening when he had encountered a young woman struggling to cross a bridge while carrying a heavy suitcase. He gave her a lift and learned her story: she had come to the big city from Varnsdorf, where she had been seduced by a young engineer, who had given her a phony address in Žižkov and promised to take her away from her dreary life. After confirming that she had been duped, Forman interviewed the girl for much of the rest of the night, before putting her on a train back to her home town. Commentators have noted that Forman was particularly sensitized to such situations because when he was 10, his mother had been taken away by the Gestapo, never to be seen again, which led to years of Forman traveling around searching for security with nothing but a suitcase. In Forman's words: "I guess I'll always be moved by the sight of a young person with a suitcase seeking a connection in a strange city."Forman, 147.
Forman recounted this memory to fellow film enthusiasts and colleagues Ivan Passer and Jaroslav Papoušek and asked them if it might be the basis for a good film. "Maybe", replied Passer, "but it still needs one more thing – a billiards table." The trio had a passion for billiards and felt that they could make a success of even the weakest idea if they had ready access to a table. Having found a good one at Dobříš Castle, the three, along with Václav Šašek, wrote a screenplay that fleshed out Forman's encounter with the young woman from Varnsdorf.Forman, 148.
When the finished script was submitted to the Šebor-Bor production team, it was approved at first, only to have the chief of the script department pronounce it the dullest thing he'd read in years and urge Forman not to proceed with the project, since it would spoil the good reputation the director had established with Black Peter. In Forman's words: "It wasn't arty enough, but, on the other hand, it didn't have enough commercial appeal either. It would offend and irritate the public, he told me, because it made fun of the common man, who would be disgusted by it."Liehm, p. 62 Despite this objection, Vlastimil Harnach, the head of the studio, approved proceeding with the film in part because, due to the political and cultural thaw in Czechoslovakia at the time, decision makers were anxious to avoid the appearance of overt administrative interference in the creative process.Liehm, pp. 61–2
Casting
Forman and his colleagues were committed to the strategy of casting non-professionals and using dialogue improvisation whenever possible. Most of the actors were chosen from among relatives, friends and acquaintances of Forman and his crew, to the point where Forman was later to liken the atmosphere to making a "home movie". For the title role, Forman selected his 18-year-old ex-sister-in-law, Hana Brejchová, because he had known her a long time, trusted her, and had great respect for her natural talents: "She had an amazing ability of free expression, but with the risk that she didn’t recognize the extent. However, Vláďa Pucholt [who played Milda] held her firmly in the rhythm of the scene, in a professional position." The character of Milda's father was played by the uncle of Miroslav Ondříček's wife, and Milda's mother was played by a factory lathe operator whom Passer and Papoušek had met on a streetcar, and who struck them as someone who "seemed so interested in things around her, no matter how silly".Liehm, pp. 62–3. The factory supervisor was played by the actual public relations manager of the factory at Zruč nad Sázavou, where location shooting took place.Liehm, 64–5 For the main trio of reservists, Forman wanted to use non-professionals, including the writer Josef Škvorecký, but found that, while the three men did well improvising together whenever they appeared in pairs, they lost their rhythm when all three were included in the same shot.Liehm, 64 So Forman went to Škvorecký and told the writer that he looked too intelligent to play his role and replaced him with the professional actor Vladimír Menšík. In Škvorecký's words: "To tell someone that he is too intelligent to be an actor is a very nice way of letting him know that he should stay with screen-play writing. Milos is a very considerate person. The fact that he so gently threw me out made possible the greatest scene of Loves of a Blonde". Forman was later to justify his decision to add a professional: "While nonactors keep the actors honest and real, the actors give the scene the rhythm and shape that the nonactors don't feel. A nonactor inhabits the situation so completely that he or she isn't able to view it from the outside, to perceive it as a rhythmic whole with its punctuation and its larger dramatic purpose. Nonactors are perfectly content to repeat themselves and ramble on, so an actor can pull them through the dramatic arch of the scene and draw out the emotional contours of the situation."Forman, 150
Ironically, the least self-confident performer in the film was one of the few professional actors: Vladimír Pucholt, who played the pianist. According to Forman: "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."
Filming
Since he was working with a largely non-professional cast, Forman's operating procedure was never to share the script with any of the performers, because if he had given them the screenplay, "they’ll take it home to read, and their wives will end up directing your movie". Instead, he chose to explain each scene in great detail just before starting to shoot takes, reciting the dialog from memory only one time, so that when the camera was rolling the actors had to try to remember as much as they could of what he had told them and then improvise to the best of their ability what they had forgotten or only half-understood. His cameraman was later to say that, as a result, all the performers were playing Miloš Forman playing their roles.