Line #17 Film/TheFiremensBall


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_0649_5.JPG]]
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3	''The Firemen's Ball'' (original title: ''Hoří, má panenko'') is a 1967 film from Czechoslovakia, directed by Creator/MilosForman.
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5	The firemen in some small Czech town are honoring one of their oldest colleagues, who is 85 years old and has terminal cancer, although apparently nobody's told him. They elect to hold a ball in the local dance hall, with prizes to be raffled off and a beauty contest. Unfortunately, the ball is a series of disasters. The elaborate banner that the firemen meant to hang from the rafters catches fire and burns up. The prizes are stolen, one at a time, right from under the noses of the chagrined firemen. The contestants for the BeautyContest turn out to be a bunch of mostly homely girls who are unwillingly drafted into the competition--and when the girls literally run away at the start of the pageant, a riot breaks out.
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7	Then a nearby home catches fire.
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9	''The Firemen's Ball'' was the first film Milos Forman made in color and the last that he made in his native country. It was part of the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_New_Wave Czech New Wave]]", an explosion of creativity in Czech film that coincided with a period of political liberation that culminated in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring Prague Spring]] of 1968. When the Prague Spring was crushed by Soviet tanks, Forman and his fellow New Wave directors defected to the West. ''The Firemen's Ball'' ball was immediately banned and would remain banned in Czechoslovakia until the VelvetRevolution and the fall of Communism in 1989.
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11	Used to be KeepCirculatingTheTapes, but has since been released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
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13	----
14	!!Tropes:
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16	* BookEnds: The opening scene has all the firemen admiring the ceremonial hatchet they're giving to the old chairman. In the end they give him the box, only for the chairman to open it and find out that the hatchet was stolen too.
17	* BuxomBeautyStandard: The firemen are obsessed with breasts. When they're scouting the crowd at the ball for beauty contestants, one says "We're going to have to go to the balcony to see real busts." When they do, the same man sees a large and massively endowed older woman and calls her "a queen!"
18	* CommieLand: A Commie Land movie made ''inside'' Commie Land, depicting Czechoslovak authorities as bumbling idiots and society as hopelessly corrupt.
19	* DancesAndBalls: One that goes pretty poorly.
20	* DirtyOldMan: All the old firemen, who goggle at the girls in the beauty pageant. When one of prettier girls says she brought her swimsuit, then proceeds to take off her dress and show it, the gross old firemen tell her to pose and then wish that they'd had the other girls bring swimsuits. One angry father shows up and yanks his daughter out of the "pageant", saying "I'll show you a beauty queen, you dirty geezers!"
21	* ExtremelyShortTimespan: A single afternoon and evening.
22	* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Locjik, the old coot for whom the ball is nominally being held, is dying of cancer, but no one has told him.
23	* MaleGaze: The horny old firemen leer at the young girls they assembled for the beauty pageant. When one particularly busty young woman enters, the camera and the old men's gazes follow her bosom.
24	* NaughtyUnderTheTable: When the zaftig young woman goes under the table to retrieve her pearls, her boyfriend goes after her. At first she tries to push him away, but when one of the firemen looks under the table, he sees the two of them having sex.
25	* RunningGag: Stuff disappearing from the prize table, one prize at a time.
26	* VictoriasSecretCompartment. One zaftig young woman has quite a few pearls disappear into her compartment after her necklace breaks. Her dance partner notices. Sex under a table follows.

Context Film / TheFiremensBall