Remembering the Movies, Mar. 25 - 31

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

I couldn't complete Remembering the Movies at its regularly scheduled time this week, as I was working in Philadelphia. An explanation of the delay was scheduled to appear but, as always seems to be the case when I'm not at my computer, the announcement didn't go up on time, leaving this spot vacant on Friday morning. So rest assured that the series continues, regardless of blogging snafus. This week we have Marlon Brando's directorial debut, an early American picture from Milos Forman, and a kids' film which might serve as a nostalgic touchstone for some of our younger readers (that very notion might make some other readers feel rather old). Next week, the entry will appear on Friday morning, as usual. In movie-related news, I got to run up the "Rocky steps" in Philly.

The Sunday Matinee: Loves of a Blonde

This is an entry in The Sunday Matinee series.

Loves of a Blonde, Czechoslovakia,1965, dir. Milos Forman, starring Hana Brejchová, Vladimír Pucholt

Story: A young woman sleeps with a charming young pianist; when she pursues him to Prague, she discovers that he did not take their romance as seriously as she did.

The title, like so much else in Milos Forman’s second feature, is gently ironic. With its plural “Loves,” it suggests a worldly figure, a free-spirited sixties girl who rounds up loves, and lovers, with a sense of carefree fun. At the same time, “a Blonde” implies a symbolic woman more than an actual one, probably a silly girl who falls in love and breaks hearts without knowing her own power and/or foolishness. Well, the blonde in Loves of a Blonde, Andula (Hana Brejchová), is rather foolish. And in the course of the movie, she does upset and befuddle at least one boyfriend, by recoiling from him without telling him why. Yet at film’s end, she has had only one real lover, and it was her heart that was broken, not his. Most importantly, Andula is not Julie Christie sent to Prague – not a swinger, but a dreamer, a naïve young woman who is not responding to a new freedom but reacting to a lack thereof. Just as the Prague Spring would flourish for a brief period, before Soviet tanks re-imposed a totalitarian regime for another two decades, so Andula’s season of hope is short. When we last see her, she is back in the factory toiling away, sad and quite alone. Though Loves of a Blonde is a comedy, and a very funny one, at its core is a tragic (albeit still romantic) sense of life.