MichaelB wrote:Vladimír Menšík as Vacovský, one of the three hapless soldiers at the dance
...whom we recently saw playing the monk (and sheep enthusiast), Bernard, in
Marketa Lazarová. I didn't recognise him at first, without the beard.
Drucker wrote:It's an incredibly breezy, free-feeling film that really lets us get to know each character while still leaving plenty of unanswered questions. I believe those unanswered questions to be the greatest charm of the film, perhaps... Why does Milda reject the boy who gives her the ring? Who knows. There really might not be a reason, but she is sick of him, over him, and doesn't want to see him anymore.
I think your excellent post touches on some of the key things that make this such a great film. As you say, there is a sense of intimacy with these characters, and yet they remain opaque and inscrutable in many ways.
Ken Loach sums up this sense of non-intrusive intimacy in terms which reveal a lot about how and why this film exerted such a huge influence on him: 'it was very detailed, very intimate, you felt that every frame had been closely observed...'; but at the same time, 'there was a real sympathy, a sense that the picture was at the service of the subject, not imposing on it. It's all become rather hostile more recently - there's a tendency to turn the subject into an object. You felt that the characters were part of their background.'
Andula, in Forman's film, reminds me a lot of the protagonists in
Kes or
Family Life. The film is attentive and sympathetic to her situation, but never presumes to pluck out and interpret her thoughts and feelings. There are many extraordinarily powerful moments, especially in the scenes in Milda's home towards the end, where we just watch Andula listening while other people discuss her or attempt to control her, and it's impossible to infer her emotions on the basis of what we see - or at any rate, I think it would be misguided to try and come up with any definitive interpretation.
One thing I disagree with you about is the breezy tone, but again the ambiguity here is one of the film's strengths. It does seem very light-hearted at first glance, and the jokes do get funnier with each viewing. But I'm also finding the film more and more sad, more Loach-ian I guess.
It begins with that rather glum young woman sitting against some depressing '60s wallpaper and singing a song which adopts a male point of view, and appears to be about the man's courtship rituals being repeatedly shot down by a woman who just wants to have sex. It's a Czech song, but in an American style, so perhaps suggests a compromised sense of cultural identity; and it's a woman singing, but a male perspective on love-making. We will later see this same woman suggesting that her fellow workers vote to make the 'honour pledge', which is itself founded on the principle that men's abusive behaviour ('hooliganism' in the terms of the song) is a response to women's promiscuity. The irony here is neatly encapsulated by the film's over-arching narrative, in which the state supplies the women of Zruč with an abundance of men for the specific purpose of providing for the women's presumed sexual needs, then sternly warns these same women that allowing such needs to dictate their actions will cause men to treat them badly...
The song, like the pledge and the vote, is part of the process whereby these ideas are propagated and drummed into the women's heads. The film seems primarily interested in the de-individualising effect of such ideas. A close-up of a shabby floral decoration on a patch of wallpaper accompanies the opening credits as the 'hooligan' song plays out, and it's an effective way of establishing this film's stance on the insipid clichés, received ideas and oppressive cultural norms that operate in every scene.
The title, 'Loves of a Blonde', is very telling. In the UK it's called 'A Blonde in Love', which places less emphasis on the various men Andula works her way through than on Andula herself and her journey (if that's the word for it). Michael Brooke, in the booklet accompanying the Second Run release, says that the American title is the more literally faithful, 'but neither English version catches the bookending rhyme of "lásky" (loves) and "vlásky" (hair)'; he goes on to call the film a 'rueful, sobering study of the deadening effect that one's environment can have on one's prospects'. Even the title of the film pigeon-holes Andula as 'a blonde', aligning her love life with her hair-colour. When Milda finds her asleep in his parents' flat and fails to identify her, it is because he 'didn't recognise her hair' - the fact that she is a blonde conveys nothing about her identity or her capacity for love.
What I like most about the film, at the moment, is that it
could be read as tracing a fairly conservative narrative in which a young woman fools around with a ne'er-do-well, a married man, and some middle-aged losers, before tentatively finding her way into a nice, unpretentious, respectable family with a healthy sense of morals. At the end, Andula tells her friend that she will be visiting Milda and his family 'from now on' ('pretty often' in the Second Run version), suggesting that this time she may have found someone to go steady with, and may also have a stabilising influence on Milda himself. The film
could be read this way - but there are lots of subversive little moments undermining this narrative.
Note Andula's persistence in saying she doesn't trust Milda when he's trying to bed her: when we cut to the two having sex, moments later, she is saying 'I do trust you, I trust you completely', but she's crying as she says this. Why? Tears of joy and cathartic relief? Or is her trust for this young man just a story she's telling herself while being coerced into what Milda clearly regards as a one night stand?
I say 'clearly', and this would have been clear if the deleted scene (included on the Criterion disc) had been kept in the film - the one where we see Milda trying to bully his way into another woman's home, being tricked into climbing through someone else's window, and then being chased away by the police. Without this scene, we just see him having drinks with a woman and refusing to buy her a flower, and he doesn't come across as
quite so much of a womaniser. Still, look at his subtly shifting facial expressions as he cradles Andula's head and reassures her that he's just been out with his friends - and especially when he says he's glad to see her, then asks how long she plans to stay. As I said above, I think it's a mistake to be too definitive in interpreting these kind of gestures, but my point is that his reactions upon finding her in his home are deeply ambiguous.
And then there's the moment when Andula eavesdrops on the family's bickering as they settle into bed. This is an extended comic scene, and Andula's behaviour seems to contribute to the farcical tone. But then, as the mother complains that this girl has ruined her evening, we see Andula kneeling outside the door, sobbing bitterly. Again, the tears are ambiguous. Is she just having a penitent cry over her own thoughtless behaviour, and is this a sign that she is growing up and taking responsibility and becoming a good girl? Or is she crying because another attempt to find love has come to nothing, and because once again she finds herself out of place, unwanted and un-recognised (in the most profound sense)?
When we see her talking to her friend again in bed, the emphasis could be more on continuity than on progression: the romantic fantasies of the dorm room have petered out twice before, and this time will be no different. For all the well-meaning efforts of the factory director to help these women get a social life outside the factory, Andula's social life is still limited to her circle of girlfriends in the dormitory, and this doesn't exactly seem like a very tolerant, supportive community. Indeed, the journey to see Milda was clearly an attempt to escape the confines of the factory accommodation. Andula refuses to vote for or against the pledge, and when they ask for abstentions, we cut to Andula hitch-hiking and raising her arm in the air, as though to signify her abstention from that whole stifling community.
And what about the apparently benign social director at the factory? Is he really all that benign, or are his over-zealous attempts at instigating social interaction more than a little bit creepy? Notice the way Andula glances at him after he inspects her work and pats her on the shoulder in the factory. Does she look grateful for his attentive, friendly behaviour? Or a little uncomfortable? At the very end of the film, she's back in the factory again, and we see her glance at the director as he passes behind her. It seems like a furtive glance, perhaps signifying nothing more than the worker's anxiety as the supervisor walks past, but perhaps signifying the same kind of discomfort Andula and her friends seem to feel when subjected to the attentions of the other, equally over-zealous and over-attentive, men in this film.
Does anyone else see the film in this way, or do you think I'm reading a bit too much doom and gloom into it?
