The wonderful LOVES OF A BLONDE is part of Cannes Film Festival tribute at FIAF and will be introduced by director Miloš Forman
CinémaTuesdays: LOVES OF A BLONDE (LÁSKY JEDNÉ PLAVOVLÁSKY) (Miloš Forman, 1965)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, July 16, $10, 12:30, 4:00, 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
Released a few years before the Summer of Love and Prague Spring, Miloš Forman’s Loves of a Blonde is a very funny romantic black comedy that also has a lot to say about women’s burgeoning sexual freedom. The delightful Hanu Brejchovou stars as Andula, a young factory worker whose sexual liberation is ahead of its time in an old-fashioned small town. When a trainload of military reservists arrives, most of the single women do their best to attract the uniformed men at a big party, but Andula is more interested in pianist Milda (Vladimíra Pucholta). In a scene for the ages, three men try to pick up Andula and her two friends, with hysterical results. Later, when Andula visits Milda in Prague, she meets the piano player’s parents (Milada Jezková and Josef Sebánek), who are a droll riot. A Czech New Wave classic that evokes Godard and Truffaut, Loves of a Blonde, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, caused a sensation when it played the New York Film Festival and introduced Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus) to the world. Notably, assistant director and cowriter Ivan Passer, who also worked with Forman on the Oscar-nominated The Firemen’s Ball, defected to America following Prague Spring and went on to make such films as Born to Win and Cutter’s Way. Loves of a Blonde is screening July 16 as part of the FIAF CinémaTuesdays series “Highlights of Cannes Film Festival with Gilles Jacob,” comprising works chosen by festival president Jacob in honor of the glamorous event’s sixty-fifth anniversary, and the one and only Forman himself will be at Florence Gould Hall to introduce the 7:30 show. [ed note: Unfortunately, Forman has had to cancel his appearance.] The series continues July 23 with Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana before concluding July 30 with Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket.