The Firemen's Ball

The Firemen's Ball (1967)

Hoří, má panenko

A colorful comedy, in which people dance, steal and extinguish the fire.

The firemen of a provincial Czechoslovakian town throw a ball in honor of the old chief's retirement. There will be music and dancing, a beauty pageant and a raffle. The whole town will be in attendance. However, the proceedings are dogged by difficulty at every step. Workplace injuries, stolen prizes, a shortage of pretty girls... and fire.

Date of release
1967-12-15
TMDB
7.1 / 10 (269)
Runtime
1h 13m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Miloš Forman

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Vrchlabí, Kulturní dům Střelnice, and Horská
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 2

The Firemen's Ball 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. By portraying the prevailing corruption of the local community and the collapse of even well-intentioned plans, the film satirized the communist system.

Background

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. "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.

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.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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