Milos Forman

When I had the opportunity to interview Milos Forman several years ago, I knew I was looking at an artist and a legend. His cinema is synonymous with freedom, and it did not sound bombastic to me that he compared himself to Goya in his condition as a privileged observer of the surrounding social reality.

Jan Tomas Forman, better known as Milos Forman, was born in Cáslav, then Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, on February 18, 1932. Of course, he knew first hand what totalitarian regimes are, since his parents, Protestants, died victims of Nazi persecution, she in the Auschwitz extermination camp, he, a professor, in Buchenwald; then it would be Milos’s turn to live under the communist boot until he went into exile. It is therefore not surprising that the proclamation of freedom without restrictions became the central theme of his filmography, a freedom always threatened by those who seek to control the actions of others. However, Milos assures that the family tragedy did not affect him as much because as a child, in his imagination, the absence of parents in a field associated it with something of a vacation type,

Before the war, Forman claims to have only seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , and a Czech silent film. Curiously, after the war, he began to love the Seventh Art thanks to silent movies, he has no doubts about describing Buster Keaton , Charles Chaplin , Harold Lloyd , Stan Laurel , Oliver Hardy and Ben Turpin as personal “heroes” , because “they made me laugh”, maybe something he was in great need of.

During the years of World War II, Milos lived with relatives, only to find himself brutally orphaned in his teens. At the Podebrady public school where he studied as a boarding student, he had illustrious desk and dormitory companions, such as the playwright and president Vlacav Havel and the Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski . Also friends from the time are Ivan Passer , a collaborator on his Czech films, and the great cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek , whom he met thanks to Passer.

Forman’s first professional steps in the cinema were as a screenwriter, he was attracted to the profession of storyteller: in 1955 he co-wrote for Martin Fric Nechte to na mne , and in 1958 he did the same role with Ivo Novák in Stenata , where Jana Brejchová stars., whom he married that year, although the marriage broke up in 1962. At that time, he discovered that he did not like what others did with their scripts, and he set the goal of being a director to have more control over what he wrote. It is ironic that when he settles in the United States and shoots in English, he is forced to give up writing his scripts, and as he recognized, he will never master the language to directly write the stories for the screen, he must base himself on the creation from others, as long as it fits into their very personal way of seeing things.

Forman’s adventure as a director, who studied at FAMU, the Prague film school, began at the time when a group of friends ran a modest musical theater in Prague. It occurred to him to offer to shoot a kind of home movie, as a memory, and in this way Concurso would be born , a fresh documentary shot in a rudimentary way in black and white, consisting of two segments, one on the formation of popular orchestras, the another about a musical audition. Of special merit is the work of synchronizing image and sound, recorded independently, a true editing filigree.

The budding director continues to make cinema close to reality with Pedro, el negro (1964), the tribulations of a young man who has just started his working life. That year is the year of Forman’s second marriage, with another actress, Vera Kresadlová , with whom he will have twin children, and with whom he will remain until 1999. Curiously, the Czech director’s third marriage, with a Martina Forman outside the world of cinema , gave him another set of twin sons.

The love of a blonde (1965) is an important advance in Forman’s career, corroborated by his next work, On fire, firefighters!(1967). Proof of this is that the two films would be nominated for an Oscar for best non-English language film. Both films combine a certain realism with a touch of mischievous comedy that seemed unthinkable in a regime on the other side of the iron curtain, but which was possible during the ill-fated Prague Spring, prematurely withered by the force of Soviet tanks. Specifically with the film about the firefighters, starring non-professional actors, authentic firefighters for a small town, the party tried to predispose the cast and their countrymen against the film, organizing a screening that they hoped would not be liked due to the satirical nature of the film. headband; It was shown that tyrants do not have a sense of humor and the simple people do,

The popularity of his films towards the Oscars enabled Forman to undertake the American adventure and shoot his first film in English, Hopeless Youth (1971), whose script involved, among others, Jean-Claude Carrière , with whom he would associate for years to come. Afternoon at Valmont (1989) – a film that had a very difficult time succeeding, since it was retelling a story that had been very successful thanks to Dangerous Liaisons – and Goya’s Ghosts (2006). And the road to exile after the hardening of the Czechoslovak regime becomes smoother and more transitory, since the authorities had granted him permission to work in the United States in Youth without Hope., his did not require a breakup scene with no turning back. Forman considered that he was wrong in his approach to the film, because “I tried to make a Czech film in the United States” about the youth of the 60s, which ended in failure. He learned the lesson for the future, and would dismiss as snobbery the attitude of some Europeans who say that their mission is not to give the public what they ask for.

The indisputable international success comes to him thanks to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), where he is sponsored by producer Saul Zaentz, who will repeat with him in the future. The story of the criminal who feigns insanity to be locked up in a psychiatric center, memorable Jack Nicholson , revolutionizing the other inmates, became a symbol of anti-system culture, and was also a parable about the repression of communist regimes. Five Oscars took the tape, including those for best film and director, a feat that he would repeat five years later with Amadeus, although in this case the hoarded statuettes were eight. The question of freedom above any type of coercion would take it to the extreme with her biopic about the pornographer creator of The Hustler magazine The Larry Flint scandal (1996); and it is that for the filmmaker the film “is not about pornography, it is about freedom of expression”, freedom to express even what he personally and others do not approve. He would return to the theme of freedom in Goya’s Ghosts , although his drawing of the Inquisition was tremendously anachronistic.

In three consecutive Forman tapes, music is of great importance. Hair (1979) is a somewhat flat look at the hippie movement. More accurately adapts EL Doctorow in Ragtime , where the legendary James Cagney and Pat O’Brien met for the last time , in a plot about a black pianist victim of injustice in the jazz age. And of course it hits the bell with Amadeus , a brilliant look at the strange mixture of admiration and jealousy towards genius in a rude person, a perfect adaptation of Peter Shaffer ‘s play on the relationship between Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with moments as memorable as the composition of the Requiem, and great performances by Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham . The film would make many historians tear their hair out, who did not understand its condition as a metaphor with a historical backdrop, in the style of Shakespeare’s works.

Forman’s interest in real characters, albeit with a very personal look, can be seen in Man on the Moon (1999), which follows the adventures of a rather bizarre American comedian, Andy Kaufman (1949-1984), capable of entertaining and irritate in equal measure. To tell his story, Forman had Jim Carrey , in a role with which the actor was trying to detach himself a bit from the insubstantial comedies that he used to sign up for. The script was also the work of two experts in looking at weirdos, as Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski had previously written for Tim Burton Ed Wood .

Despite the intentions of denouncing the excesses that human beings can incur, by religious authorities and the citizen revolution, even in the name of the most sacred ideals, be it God, or freedom, equality, fraternity, Los Goya’s Ghosts , a Spanish co-production with Javier Bardem in the cast, the 2006 film crashed at the box office. It seems that later he directed with his son Petr Forman the unknown musical Dobre placená procházka(2009), with little impact. He did not get to shoot a project, announced in 2008, of the adaptation of a novel by Georges-Marc Benamous, which recounts the annexation of the Sudetenland to Germany by action of Adolf Hitler, and in which the former president and playwright had to collaborate already deceased Vlacav Havel.