Milos Forman: The Human Comedy

The difference between the cinema of Eastern and Western Europe is, in part, a difference in history. The post-World War II period - from 1945 to the present-widened the gap. Western European cinema has been largely influenced by the commercialism of the United States. Eastern European cinema, however, has been dictated by the ideological demands socialist state. Not that Eastern European cinema has been reduced to simple propaganda. Instead, the filmmakers of such countries as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland have developed their own unique traditions and the concerns of their films are complex and surprisingly non-dogmatic.

The mid-sixties in Czechoslovakia, prior to the 1968 Soviet invasion, was an especially active and inventive period. A new generation of film­makers were breaking away from the legacy of social realism and the Stalinist era. Artists like Milos Forman, Jan Kadar, and Ivan Passer began exploring contemporary subjects and the realities of life in modern Czechoslovakia. Highly satirical, and often controversial, the filmmakers of the Czech New Wave recorded the minor triumphs and major defeats of the human spirit when confronted with the burdens of politics, history, and life in general. In a land where Franz Kafka is considered a humorist, comedy is a little darker and largely derives from the subtle observations of one's own entrapment.

One of the most important of the Czech New Wave filmmakers of the mid-sixties is Milos Forman. Born in 1932, Forman grew up during the critical periods of the Nazi rule of Czechoslovakia in the forties and the purges by Stalin in the fifties. As with every filmmaker in Eastern Europe, history was an important force in shaping Forman's attitudes. He studied at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in Prague and by the late fifties he was writing screenplays and radio scripts. It was not until 1963, however, that Forman would direct his first film, a short called The Audition (Czech 1963). This film also marked the beginning of the collaboration bet­ween Forman and co-screenwriter Ivan Passer.

Though a minor film, The Audition is worth noting for two aspects that became common traits in Forman's films. The first is the performance of music, in particular the actual act of playing music and the personali­ties of the performers. The second is the generation gap. Like many of his fellow Czech New Wave filmmakers, Forman explored the aspirations and disappointments of young people confronted by a society made rigid by political dogma, a strict social structure, and an official obsession with recent history (i.e. World War II and the fight against fascism). This, along with the increasingly liberal policies of the Czechoslovakian government during the sixties, allowed Forman to humorously explore the problems and contradictions of present society. Though his films were never as controversial as those of other Czech New Wave filmmakers like Jan Nemec (whose film A Report on the Party and the Guests - Czech 1966 - has been banned forever in Czechoslovakia), Forman humorously dealt with the disappointments and bewilderments of his generation.

Forman's first feature film, Black Peter (Czech 1964), has a strong resemblance to the Antoine Doinel films by Truffaut. Peter, like Antoine, is a young man who seems unsure of his place in society. His job as a store detective places him in a position as an agent of established order, yet he looks on complacently when a stout woman shop­lifts candy from the store. His father, a part time bandmaster, is a petty dictator who becomes embarrassed when lecturing his son about a book on the human body. As is so often the case in Forman's films, the older generation lacks any direction for the future and the new generation is confused and adrift.

Black Peter has a very improvised, cinema-veritie appearance which would change in Forman's work to a progressively more structured approach. His second feature, Loves of a Blonde (Czech 1965), is more carefully constructed than Black Peter. However, Forman retained his strong sense for the details and ironies of everyday life. Forman once said in an interview, "All the most important and immediate conflicts in life are between different, equally well-intentioned people's conception of what the best is." This conflict of intentions, which is first stated in Loves of a Blonde, would become the central thesis of Forman's films. Andula, the blonde of the title, discovers that the forces of society, family, and propriety are stronger than romantic love. Though her lover's parents are distrustful and protective, they have only the best of intentions.

The ruthless tyranny of good intentions is the central point of Forman's best known and, perhaps, greatest work. Although the subject of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (USA 1975) seemed quintessentially American, Forman's sensibilities added depth which the novel essentially lacked. In the novel, the character of Big Nurse was a crude, two dimensional figure of malevolence. But in the film, with Forman's rewrite and Louise Fletcher's understated performance, the character's evil stems from her blind adherence to official policy. Her intentions are, arguably, better than those of Nicholson's McMurphy, but McMurphy's instinctive mis­behavior may be more therapeutic.

The novel's essentially Freudian viewpoint is still evident in the film, in which the central battle is between McMurphy's father figure and Big Nurse's mother figure and McMurphy's ultimate fate is a form of cas­tration, but Forman is more interested in the social implications of the narrative rather than the psychological. As is the case in Eastern European films about the Stalinist era, the real evil comes from the unbending and unforgiving rule of a supreme authority figure. Having fled Czechoslovakia in 1968 in order to escape the Soviet invasion, Forman has a strong intuitive knowledge of authority figures who forcefully impose their own particular notions of good intentions.



Forman arrived in the United States during the turbulence of the late sixties. His first American film, Taking Off (USA 1971), attempts to summarize his bemused first impressions of his adopted country. It is not surprising that Forman's first American film would concern the generation gap, but unlike Black Peter, Taking Off viewed the gap from the parents' perspective. Their attempts to bridge the gap takes the parents through a series of misunderstandings and failed intentions before they realize that they, like their daughter, are equally confused. In this respect, Buck Henry's father in Taking Off is directly linked with the young man in Black Peter. Being older does not mean greater wisdom, but only an increase in perplexity. For Forman, perplexity is the one thing in life you can be sure of.