Cast: Jan Vostrcil, Josef Sebánek, Josef Valnoha, Frantisek Debelka, Josef Kolb, Jan Stöckl. Screenplay: Milos Forman, Jaroslav Papousek, Ivan Passer, Václav Sasek. Cinematography: Miroslav Ondrícek. Production design: Karel Cerný. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Karel Mares.
Milos Forman's raucous comedy about the screwups of a small town fire department as it attempts to celebrate its retired fire chief and raise money with a raffle got the director into deep trouble in Czechoslovakia when the regime realized that the film was actually a satire on communist bureaucracy. And the truth is, The Firemen's Ball teeters between slapstick comedy and mordant satire so much that it winds up a little too dark for laughter, a little too silly for pointed criticism. Which is not to say that it isn't sometimes very funny or that its criticism didn't have an effect: Forman went into exile and wound up a major Hollywood director. The mostly non-professional actors in its cast throw themselves into their roles and the pacing of the film is appropriately hectic. Somehow, despite the frowns of officialdom, The Firemen's Ball wound up as the Czech entry for the best foreign language film at the Oscars, which led to another irony: The winner in that category was the Soviet Union's entry, Sergey Bondarchuk's War and Peace.