Czech New Wave classic part of festival

Loves of a Blond typical of genre

After the break up of the Soviet Block in 1989, many of the countries formerly considered united under communism are now being seen as unique cultural entities. The Eastern European Film Festival celebrates three of these countries: Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The festival runs every Thursday evening at 8 p.m. in Mudd 050.

Elena Monastireva-Ansdell, Russian house director, organized the festival. She feels that the festival presents "the perfect opportunity to discover each individual culture," cultures which fall outside of the traditional program house focus.

Dan Goulding, head of Oberlin's Film Studies department, chose three recent films to represent Yugoslavia. Monastireva-Ansdell chose three Polish films and two highly acclaimed Czech New Wave films to complete the schedule. This week Milos Forman's 1965 New Wave classic Loves of a Blond is showing.

The Czech New Wave is a 1960s film movement which set itself in opposition with the Social Realism conventions of Stalin's regime. Social Realist films were highly stylized narratives following a hero who would overcome anti-Communist obstacles and fight for the common good. These films focused on illustrating socialist ideals rather than representing human psychology or day to day activities.

During the 1950s there was a backlash against Stalin's cult of personality, and esthetic restrictions in Soviet Block countries were loosened.

The Czech New Wave grew from graduates of FAMU, the Prague Film School, who had new goals for a socialist esthetic grounded in non-Soviet styles. They took inspiration from the Italian Neo-Realists, who used non-professional actors, depicted working class scenarios, and filmed on location with naturalistic lighting.

Combined with the French Cinéma Vérité style, which jettisoned traditional narrative progression in favor of unconnected scenes of day to day life, the New Wave sought to put a more human face on socialist films.

Socialist life was presented in an unglorified, unstylized fashion populated by working class characters concerned with the daily problems of living happily and finding personal satisfaction.

Loves of a Blond epitomizes this esthetic philosophy by concentrating its plot on the everyday activities of a working class girl, and its camera on the human form.

Milos Forman, born in 1932, is one of the most acclaimed directors to come out of the Czech New Wave. Forman lived and worked in Czechoslovakia until August of 1968, at which time the Soviets reestablished a totalitarian regime. This regime was unfriendly to the experiments and attitudes of New Wave artists, and Forman fled to the West.

Forman is best known as the successful director of American-made films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, Amadeus, and The People vs. Larry Flynt.

As the title implies, Loves of a Blond very loosely follows the ups and downs of a young woman named Andula in her search for love.

On the whole, Loves of a Blond is a fairly straightforward film. The characters' language is plain and undramatic, and their situations are not extraordinary. Many of the film's shots are motionless, focusing on the internal composition and movement of the characters on screen. This places the emphasis of attention upon the characters themselves, rather than the film style.

The camera pays particular attention to the characters' expressions and gazes through many close ups. Especially during the love-making scene, Forman softly lights and sensuously frames the bodies of Andula and her lover against one another to very beautiful effects.

The enjoyment in watching this film is in the quiet irony of its humor. When the government brings soldiers to Andula's town to increase the girls' quality of life, the men turn out to be overweight and middle-aged, of no interest to the girls. Yet Forman captures their pathetic interactions with an irrelevant air of comedy.

The film's many ironic contrasts show a Czechoslovakia split between old and young, women and men, and socialist ideals and reality. These contrasts are shown as both comic and sad, and ultimately absurd.

Loves of a Blond works subtly to engage its audiences, and is a type of film rarely seen. Smart, entertaining and touching, the film seems to capture the searching spirit of its age in both style and content.

Upcoming Eastern European films include another New Wave film, and two nights of films by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, whose Color trilogy, Blue, White, and Red, won international acclaim.