Word: forman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Festival would have seemed as unlikely as a yacht regatta in Peking. When Ján Kadár's The Shop on Main Street was shown at New York's Lincoln Center Film Festival in 1965, it had no U.S. theater bookings; neither did Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde, when it opened the festival the following year. Shop went on to win an Oscar as the year's best foreign-language film, while Blonde, accompanied by delighted reviews, eventually proved a profitable box-office success. Czech movies may soon be as much...
Perhaps in the scenes I have labelled "social" in aspect, Forman finds himself forced to make caricatures more unequivocal than he can happily endorse...
...should be noted that Forman is not yet (in this, his second film) entirely adequate technically. He did not graduate from any of those incetuous Middle European national film academies, so unlike every other Slav we know he has neither a spine-warping bag of tricks nor an official certificate of artistry. He got into cinema as a writer, and the continuities he establishes are clearly more dramatic than graphic-which should make his art more accessible than most to the casual moviegoer...
What fascinates me is the authority with which Forman makes his technical "errors." One senses in his Walt Whitman-like momentum and in the obvious abundance of his love the potential power to create a new propriety, to make today's errors tomorrow's principles. Specifically, Forman often neglects to "place" his scenes properly in space. It is hard to lay down principles by which proper placement can be achieved, but by negative example, the color cartoon often violates such principles deliberately, for humorous effect. Thus, when Tom or Jerry gets flattened by a train steaming out of a direction...
...suggesting that Forman is a conscious innovator in form, or that he will necessarily continue his gleeful negligence of film grammar. No doubt his rough spots could be sanded away by a valedictorian from any of the academics. It doesn't much matter. Through his own flaws or through some lesser soul's corrections, Forman's large soul will continue issuing an uncommonly perceptive love for humankind...