John Waters and the finest of the Corny Collins hair-hoppers must gnash their teeth and wail in envy at the sight of the towering Czech coiffures in Milos Foreman's 1966 Oscar nominee, Loves of a Blonde.
Dark-eyed Andula looks like a sulky Slavic Sue Lyon. Stuck in the sticks, working in a shoe factory, and looking for love with someone other than one of the many married reservists in town, she builds a one-night stand with a jazz pianist into something more and heads off to Praha, suitcase in hand, to visit the bounder. At his address, she finds first his disapproving parents and then his "I made you no promises" self. She returns to the sticks, chastened, bowed, but unbroken.
It's not as heartbreaking as La Vie Rêvée des Anges; not as funny as Sedotta e Abbandonata [tagline: It's All About What Happens After What Should Never Happen Happens!].
So much for the plot. Let's talk about the mournful yet funny mood, the crystalline perfection of the black and white cinematography--so sharp it's the visual equivalent of a waft of wood smoke on a crisp fall night and tinged with the same hint of decay. It is super rueful Eastern Block austerity in a way Jim Jarmusch has only dreamed of replicating. And yet it is also the dreamiest jump-cut New Wave wonder this side of À bout de souffle.
At times, scenes play like straight documentary, especially in the first section, and given the conditions and financial straits under which filming occurred, they probably nearly were. In particular, there is a long sequence in a dance hall where the factory girls and the middle-aged reservists [a typically Communist solution to the 16 women for every man conditions] awkwardly flirt and dance. The thick cigarette smoke and pale pilsner in mugs is almost too much to bear. It all feels as real and as beautiful as Wiseman's High School.
The second section, however, the tender, goofy seduction, is so gorgeously lit, framed, and filmed that it could be a series of still photos. Andula's a gorgeous and baleful odelisque. Milda the Prague pianist avows over and over that he has no girlfriend in Prague. Imagine Belmondo and Seberg in bed, only naked and young, without cynicism or posturing or pulling faces. It's that good.
And when Andula travels to Prague in the final section to look for the pianist and finds his quarreling parents, it becomes a kitchen sink drama and Rosselinian neorealist miniature.
There are very few films that once I see them leave me indignant and mad at the whole world about the time that's been squandered living in ignorance of them. Loves of a Blonde is one.
Watch it on a double bill with East Side Story
