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The Firemen’s Ball Movie Review

The Firemen’s Ball is a 1967 Czech comedy film directed by Milos Forman. It is a very amusing, historically insightful movie.

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“You remind me of Jesus Christ.

You want to explain something to somebody all the time!“

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A volunteer fire department throws a party for their former boss with the whole town invited, but nothing goes as planned. Milos Forman is a renowned Hollywood director, but before he came to the US, he dabbled in his native country’s productions. The result is this movie that is one of his most respected early efforts and for many great reasons.

The film is highly sophisticated and clever and oh so truthful at tackling the communist regime of the Soviet variety that existed in what was then Czechoslovakia. As somebody who grew up in a previously communist country of Yugoslavia and who experienced the remnants of that system even in the early 2000s, I can confidently say that this depiction of those societies is unfortunately highly accurate.

The film is very short, clocking in at around seventy minutes. It can also get rather repetitious in its jokes repeated numerous times, making for a rather simplistic movie. However, many of those gags worked as again they were rooted in historical reality. For instance, the characters continuously complain about things in the party going missing, which is hilarious having in mind that all of these Slavic countries during this era were plagued by corruption.

Stealing was in the nature of many citizens in these countries and that was amusingly lampooned here. The chaos that erupts in the third act is over-the-top for sure, but again that is fitting for these regimes and communist gatherings where anything could go wrong at any moment in time.

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The Firemen’s Ball should have developed its characters more, but the performances are uniformly strong, especially the facial expressions. The film uses a mixture of social commentary, situational humor and slapstick, resulting in a rather complex comedy structure that mostly really worked. The editing is particularly good while the dialogue is outstandingly witty. The directing from Milos Forman is phenomenal, clearly marking the arrival of a great talent onto the international cinematic stage.