Miloš Forman

News of the death of Miloš Forman was announced today. He died last Friday at the age of 86. I was astonished to discover that he was an orphan and made only ten films in a fifty year career. 

It is always tempting when discussing the work of an émigré artist (especially an émigré filmmaker) to prize his work in his homeland (in this case, Czechoslovakia) over his Hollywood work - when there are so many examples of great filmmakers who answered the siren call of Hollywood and found a great falling off - sometimes precipitous - in the quality of their work. Forman would probably have pointed out that working creatively in an "Eastern bloc" country was like trying to conduct a symphony orchestra while wearing a straight jacket. But the limitations that communist censorship imposed on filmmakers did manage to result in good work. 

Having seen eight of his films, I found it impossible not to like his Czech feature films, Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen's Ball, even if they were not as good as the work of his fellow Czechs - Jiří Menzel, Ivan Passer, and Jaromil Jireš. He showed an affection for his characters that I found lacking in his Hollywood work.

I think Forman's best Hollywood film was The People vs. Larry Flynt. It was a splendid dramatization of one of the most important legal cases in U.S. history - in which the 1st Amendment of the Constitution had to be invoked to protect one of the most repellent people in America (even if Jerry Falwell was immeasurably more repellent than Larry Flynt). But Forman will be remembered for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, both of which won Best Picture Oscars. I preferred Valmont, his adaptation of Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, to Stephen Frears' desperately miscast version. His film of the musical Hair had the irresistible choreography of Twyla Tharp, even if the film was about ten years out of date. And Man on the Moon was hamstrung by one of the creepiest impersonations (Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman) I've ever seen.

I hope that his death will spark renewed interest in the films of the Czech New Wave, which resulted in so many fine films, including Closely Watched Trains, The Cry, Romeo, Juliet and the Darkness, Intimate Lighting, and The Joke. Some of the directors of these films stayed in Czechoslovakia and, after seeing their films banned, worked under conditions that eventually crippled their creativity. Forman, who departed Czechoslovakia after the '68 Prague Spring, faced none of these problems, but had to endure the equally insurmountable one of scraping up the money to get his risky films in Hollywood made. Sadly it is impossible for me to tell which side came out on top.

Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman, 18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018.