There is really no sign of a blond in it; even if the heroine is one, there is no way to tell in this black and white film made in 1965! But this is no complaint at all. It is one of the best films I watched lately. Well scripted and wittily directed, it was perfectly acted with poignant insight of a grim communist state.
There were many highlights and comic moments in this short film. The first was when we saw a civilian with several army officers around a desk. The army officers looked serious and said they had to consult their upper authorities before they could respond. But what was on the table was in fact an invitation to a party. The father figure, who we learnt later on was a manager of a shoe factory was concerned that there were so few boys around that the factory that girls suffered from lack of hugs by men after a hard day's work! The serious faces of the army officers - as if they were considering something of solemn nature - were of great contrast to the shameless behaviours of three army officers who were trying to seduce the girls for a one night stand at the actual party. It says a lot about the hypocrisy of those in the uniform. But it was brilliant also for another reason: the patriarch in the factory manager was the same as that in China barely three decades ago.
The second highlight had to be the party scene when three army 'uncles' (rather than 'boys' as the girls have observed when they alighted the special train) were discussing how to get the three young girls over to sit with them without showing too much interest in them. They called the waiter over and asked him to deliver a bottle of wine to their table but the poor waiter mixed up the tables and gave the bottle to the wrong table where three middle age women were showing signs of boredom and distress for the lack of interest from the roomful of army 'uncles' of their ages who were interested only in girls. And just when they were caught by this surprise gift, one of the 'uncles' marched to the table and grabbed the bottle away!
The climax was the scene at the pianist home when the heroine turned up with a suitcase late at night to everybody's surprise. In the interview included in the DVD, Milos Forman explained that because the couple were played by non-professional actors, all he did was to instruct them to say something to some effect rather than giving them written dialogues. In other words, the wonderfully performed scene of doubt, frustration and anger was largely improvised with the actors composing their own lines! What a genius the woman who played mother was! A human history about the failure of the socialist system across all broad and the more common concerns of a controlling parent could be read in her monologues: disappointment over her husband's earning power, frustration over the gap with her only son, and concerns over his future.
The interview with the director is fascinating to anyone who are interested to compare the film industry of all communist states. Milos was classified, at least through this film, as director leading the 'New Wave' cinema of the early 1960s in Czech. He had wanted something different from the 'socialist realism' cinema around that time, and he wanted to capture the 'real life' of the people he knew so well. With a shoe string budget, he could only have access to two cameras. The solution he came up with to tackle all those 'problems' had actually turned him into an 'innovative' director - or at least so to his contemporaries at home. How similar it was to the circumstances Jia Zhangke found himself in when he first launched his directorial career back in the late 1990s who had got a lot to say (of no interest to mainstream directors!) but not much money to fund his project. What Milos Forman revealed in the interview could well have been written by Jia, especially the bit about improvisation and use of amateur actors. The two were four generations and thousands of miles apart, but they came up with the same ideas, or nearly so.
Jia's Unknown Pleasure has also got a nude scene of the hero, but while the one in his was depressing, the one in Loves of A Blond is both humorous and sexy. That must be the main differences between the two who grew up in socialist countries but in different continents.
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