Milos Forman born Jan Tomas Forman in 1932, studied the dramatic arts at the Prague Academy and penned several scripts en route to directing short documentaries in 1963. Forman's first feature-length film, Peter and Paula also appeared in the year 1963. Played by non-actors and chiefly improvised, the film is deceptively simplistic. The situation conveyed - to consider such as a plot would be a woeful overstatement. It is however an unconventional rendition of an old familiar tune - the teenage pariah who is ever at odds with his parents and peers.
In 1965's A Blonde In Love, central character Andula (Hana Brejchova), an adolescent girl whose infatuation with a young piano player leads her to mistake his innocent affection for her as the start of a lasting relationship. Most memorable are two brilliantly constructed set piece sequences at the provincial dance hall.
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| Somebody forgot to post their Salvage Corps payment - from The Fireman's Ball (1967) |
With his first color feature, the sardonic The Fireman's Ball,1967, Forman moved on to different ground. The ostensible material is in much the same vein - the comic difficulties attached to holding the annual fire brigade dance in a small Czech village. However with an ambition that belies its humble scope. The Fireman's Ball can be read as a satirical allegory on the failings of Czechoslovakia's socialist bureaucracy
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| Little ditty about Jack. Forman's famous One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest |
Forman eventually went on to the movie that won him universal acclaim - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) starring Jack Nicholson, it was awarded a whopping five Oscars and was a colossal box-office success. Adapted from Ken Kesey's novel which achieved cult status during the counterculture movement of the 1960s, it tells of an unlikely anti-hero in even more unlikely surroundings - the state mental hospital. The ultimate in terrible revenge - lobotomy - that the system takes against him. Beginning as what one may consider a realist comedy - parts of the film being shot at the Oregon State Hospital - the film escalates into a dire and tragic melodrama.
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