#189- The Firemen’s Ball

Quick recap: A fire department throws a party (or ball, if you will) to honor their outgoing chief. They screw everything up with both hijinks and shenanigans.

If you like your hijinks to be creepy as hell, this is the movie for you!

Fun (?) fact: The firemen portrayed in the film are not actors, but instead real firemen from the town the movie was filmed in.

Hitler mustaches were still the rage in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s!

My thoughts: I’m just going to jump right in and say that I didn’t find The Firemen’s Ball all that funny. That’s not to say that the movie was devoid of humor, but I don’t think I was the right audience. Set during the Cold War in Czechoslovakia, I can see how people in that country might be falling out of their seat in laughter, but seeing as how I am neither under a Communist regime (shut up, Ted Cruz) or Czechoslovakian, it didn’t interest me very much. For one, it’s a film with very dark humor, which I normally love, but these jokes landed closer on the side of just being mean. One of the main plot points is that the firemen want to organize a beauty pageant so that they might choose a beautiful girl to present the award to their former chief. Many girls don’t want to participate though, and the ones that do are not very attractive. One of the only girls they want shows up during the ball to reveal that she is wearing a bikini, since this is a competition. This leads to a very awkward situation where she is strutting around in basically her underwear while all these old creepy guys leer at her. I see the humor, but I’m not laughing.

After the film was over, I read the entry in my 1001 Movies to See Before you Die book to see if there was something I might have missed. There was. Turns out, the whole film was an allegory about the Communist regime. Knowing this pissed me off because I didn’t get that at all. So not only did I not find the movie all that hilarious, I apparently completely missed the entire point of the film. And then, in reading the Wikipedia entry, I read that the director didn’t mean for the movie to say anything about Communism. People couldn’t help but assign meaning. What the movie represents is a corrupt society with a corrupt leadership. That could literally be anywhere. It just so happens that the movie was filmed in a country with Communism so that’s what people saw, but corruption is at all levels,my friend.

I feel like knowing what the director thought gives me permission to assign my own meaning and in doing so, I can see the humor more than I did before. Throughout the film, items from the raffle keep getting stolen and it’s even revealed at some point that one of the firemen’s wives is in on it. One of the firemen asks the crowd to return the items and the lights would be turned off so that no one would be embarrassed. While the lights are off, the rest of the items get stolen. At the end of the film, after everyone has gone and the party essentially ruined, the men unceremoniously give the chief their present which, when he opens the box- has also been stolen. Take whatever lesson you want to in that scene, but it made me chuckle because you know, sometimes the drapes are just blue.

Final review: 3/5

Up next: She Done Him Wrong

#184- Gigi

Quick recap: A young girl has foolish ideas of marrying instead of going into the family business of being someone’s mistress

from a scene where a creepy old man sings about how much he loves little girls because they grow up into women he wants to date

Fun (?) fact: The cat in the film hated Leslie Caron, who played Gigi and had to be drugged anytime it was in a scene with her. Considering that the cat had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, I’m not sure why director Vincente Minnelli didn’t just let it go.

I couldn’t find a picture for Gigi’s cat, but this came up and I liked it better. That cat looks like it knows something.

My thoughts: Without knowing anything about Gigi, I was fully prepared for it to suck. I ran across a list a few months back that ranked Best Picture winners and Gigi was at the bottom. I assumed from the synopsis Netflix provided that maybe the writer of the list just didn’t like musicals but 5 minutes in, I realized that no, this movie is in fact terrible and messed up.

Before I get into my rant, and believe me there will be a rant, I’d like to admit that I really loved the musical portion of the movie. The songs were catchy and witty and I found myself humming them the next day. The actors also did a fine job with their characters, although the heavy French accents got on my nerves. It felt like they were over the top, but when I looked up trivia I learned that they were genuine so I’ll give it a pass. The setting and costumes were also wonderful and reminded me of something Disney might put together to showcase Paris long ago.

So, why is this movie so bad? Basically, Gigi, who is a 15 year old girl (very important. Don’t forget this detail) has been born into a family of courtesans. She lives with her grandmother and mother but visits her great aunt once a week for lessons on snagging a rich guy to sleep with. Yeah. Gigi is naturally against the whole thing, but is seen as a girl in need of a makeover so that MEN WILL SLEEP WITH HER. So, in comes Gaston, a rich guy, who likes to hang out with this family but not sleep with any of them. He is particularly fond of Gigi, but sees her more like a child BECAUSE SHE IS. After a weekend with him at the beach, the Great Aunt and grandmother decide that poor Gigi needs to be transformed so Gaston will want to sleep with her. When he sees ‘grownup’ Gigi for the first time, he is repulsed (maybe because she’s 15?) but then sings a song about how he thought she was a baby but seeing her in that dress reminded him that he can totally hit that now. So he does. Gigi isn’t too happy about the whole thing but whatever, that’s the family business. The movie ends with Gaston returning the girl to her grandmother and running away, as the audience thinks he’s a jerk. But then he comes back and announces that he doesn’t want her as a mistress but instead as a wife. Awww. Except not, because she is freaking 15 years old.

There’s a scene at the beginning of the film where Gigi and Gaston are playing around and he threatens to spank her. Knowing how this would end only ups the creepiness factor.

Final review: I’d love to give this movie a 1/5 but I was thoroughly entertained in a car crash sort of way, so let’s go with 3/5 and then never speak of it again.

Up next: Fantastic Planet

#183- Alphaville

Quick recap: Secret Agent Lemmy Caution has been sent to Alphaville to locate a missing spy and destroy the city’s ruler- a computer named Alpha 60.

That’s some good spying going on, Caution

Fun (?) fact: Although it is a sci-fi film, director Jean-Luc Godard shot all scenes in real places around Paris and only used conventional firearms.

oooo, super sci-fi!

My thoughts: I had no idea what the hell was going on through most of the movie, and I’m still not sure what the ending was all about. Alphaville is one of those films pretentious people latch on to, but the general public would be bored to tears by it. There are many movies like that, including ones that I personally love, but this one just seemed to be pretentious for the sake of being pretentious. The director is French, after all, so maybe that’s why.

The plot of Alphaville is simple enough: spy comes to kill tyrannical leader who happens to be a supercomputer. A supercomputer in the 1960s, of course. If it was set in modern times, Lemmy Caution might be trying to murder Siri or something similar. The computer is all about logical thinking and holds executions for anyone who shows emotion, which is considered illogical thought. So, pretty straightforward, except that it wasn’t. There are several scenes in which Caution or the computer is talking and I had NO IDEA what they were saying. In looking up trivia for the movie later on, I found that many of the lines came from poetry, but it just sounded like beautiful nonsense in the context of the movie. I was also too caught up in the sci-fi details to really focus on the plot, like trying to figure out if Alphaville is a city or a planet and why it looks so similar to Paris.

Stripped down to its basic premise, Alphaville’s version of reality was quite interesting. Instead of a Bible, citizens use a dictionary, which changes constantly because words like ‘love’ and ‘weep’ are thrown out. People are treated like robots and are expected to behave as such, which also caused confusion for me because I thought the women were all computers. My favorite, scene, if you can call it that, was the depiction of the executions. There are a line of (mostly) men who stand on a diving board and are shot to death. They fall into the water, where a group of synchronized swimmers jump in to retrieve the body. Everyone claps politely and then the next person is brought in. This was the most ‘sci-fi’ part of the film and so messed up because everything looked so familiar. I actually like the idea of using present day locations because it seems as if the world depicted in the movie is not too far off from where we are right now.

Final review: 3/5. Alphaville is also considered noir, which is a weird pairing with the sci-fi genre, but I kind of liked it.

Up next: Gigi

#176- The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Quick recap: A young girl, Geneviéve, is in love with a guy, named Guy. He gets drafted to the war so the two decide to sleep together before he leaves. Geneviéve gets knocked up (of course) and after waiting a few months for Guy to write to her, gives up and marries some rich dude.

Fun (?) fact: Every word of this movie is sung. EVERY. WORD.

The ridiculously bright colors did a number on my eyes

My thoughts: Musicals have been hit or miss for me on this list and I fully expected this one to be in my ‘miss’ category by the end of the night. Every single word sung? COME ON. But actually, it had the effect of making the story more realistic. If you think about it, most musicals transition to singing and dancing with the most elaborate sets and then everyone goes back to what they are doing, as if it never happened. With The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the film is one entire song and the same melody can be heard from beginning to end. At some point I forgot the singing was even there and was able to focus on the story and characters.

Speaking of umbrellas, this Glee mashup of Umbrella/Singin’ in the Rain perfectly illustrates how over the top musicals can be.

After getting over my shock that this is a musical, my next shock came as I realized that I was watching a melodrama. COME ON. But as far as melodramas go, this one wasn’t so bad. In fact, it seemed almost….logical? No, most teenage girls wouldn’t marry a random rich guy after pledging their undying love for the man that knocked them up. But Geneviéve is in a different position, about to have to care for a newborn when her mother, the owner of the umbrella shop, can barely stay afloat. For survival’s sake, it makes sense to marry. Poor Guy, though. Apparently know one told him that his girlfriend had moved on and that he would never get to meet his child. Never fear, however, because Guy is ridiculously good looking and ends up with his late Aunt’s nurse. They marry and have a child of their own, a little boy named François. Years later, the two meet again, where Guy discovers that Geneviéve has also named her daughter François! The conversation is about as awkward as it gets and the two part, realizing that you can still be happy even if you aren’t with the one you planned on being with the rest of your life.

Final review: 3/5. It’s worth watching if you are a fan of musicals, especially ones that don’t have happy endings.

Up next: Louisiana Story

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1001 Movie Nights

Tag Archives: 3/5

#189- The Firemen’s Ball

#184- Gigi

#183- Alphaville

#176- The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

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