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The credits pass from a tomboy's scratchy yé-yé to whispers in the girls' dormitory, which sets the timbre. An early joke finds a Tarkovsky forest warmed by a striped tie, the provincial Czech crisis is then identified as a military matter, "sixteen girls to each boy" (cp. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek). The People's Army to the rescue, meaning the local lasses expecting hunky soldiers have to make do with puffy reservists. The dance floor is where Milos Forman conceives a style, the telephoto lens that sniffs out the clumsiness, callousness and vulnerability that people keep veiled, a comedy of sidelong observation. Between the tables of bored teenagers and middle-aged infantrymen is a little symphony of leers, teases, fumbles and shrugs, the runaway wedding ring adds a note of Harold Lloyd. "Is this a pub or a confessional?" The titular maiden (Hana Brejchová) gravitates toward the scrawny piano player (Vladimir Pucholt), a fellow shy creature passing through—the seduction starts with a bit of palm-reading, is punctuated by a kick in the shins and delayed by uncooperative shutters. (His concept of pillow-talk is to compare her "angular" beauty to a Picasso guitar.) Factory and ballroom, kitchen and bedroom, a nation's homely facets under the Old Guard of clueless matchmakers. Youthful Prague is a teeming discotheque, yet there the heroine finds herself in the ultimate prison of a middle-class household, grilled by a mulish Mom and Pop vaudeville team (Milada Jezková and Josef Sebánek). "You think that in the old days I could pack a suitcase and leave for a boy's parents'?" Truffaut is right around the corner with Baisers Volés, Mike Leigh takes it from there. Cinematography by Miroslav Ondrícek. With Vladimir Mensik, Ivan Kheil, Jiri Hruby, and Jan Vostrcil. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |