page_title: Loves of a Blonde
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: Loves of a Blonde / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Zruč nad Sázavou, okres Kutná Hora. Pohled od zámku na Sázavu. English: Zruč nad Sázavou, Kutná Hora District, Central Bohemian Region, the Czech Republic. A view from the castle, Sázava river. Camera location49°&#160;44′&#160;39.4″&#160;N, 15°&#160;06′&#160;07.2″&#160;E&#160;&#160;&#160;View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Google Earth
context_page_description: Loves of a Blonde, also known as A Blonde in Love, is a 1965 Czechoslovak ensemble comedy film directed by Miloš Forman that follows a young woman, Andula, who has a routine job in a shoe factory in provincial Czechoslovakia, and her attempts at forging a romantic relationship.
  Forman based his story on a real-world incident from his past and the filmmakers focused much of their attention on trying to create a real-life look and feel by filming on location in a small Czech town with a shoe factory of its own, utilizing a largely non-professional cast, relying on a considerable amount of dialogue improvisation, and employing documentary-style cinematographic techniques.
  Upon its release, Loves of a Blonde was a popular success in its home country and was shown at some major film festivals, where it was well-received, garnering a number of nominations and awards. Critical response was largely positive, although some reviewers were less enthusiastic than others.
context_section_description: Since he was working with a largely non-professional cast, Forman's operating procedure was never to share the script with any of the performers, because if he had given them the screenplay, "they’ll take it home to read, and their wives will end up directing your movie". Instead, he chose to explain each scene in great detail just before starting to shoot takes, reciting the dialog from memory only one time, so that when the camera was rolling the actors had to try to remember as much as they could of what he had told them and then improvise to the best of their ability what they had forgotten or only half-understood. His cameraman was later to say that, as a result, all the performers were playing Miloš Forman playing their roles.
  The cinematographer for Loves of a Blonde was Miroslav Ondříček, like Forman a graduate of the FAMU. Ondříček and Forman had met at Czechoslovakia's Barrandov Studios in the early 1960s when Ondříček was just learning to shoot feature films and Forman was struggling to create his own early projects. Ondříček was in full accord with Forman's reliance on non-professional actors, adopting a cinéma-vérité style compatible with orthodox socialist realism. Ondříček was schooled in documentary filmmaking and, as a result, he insisted on performing all photographic tasks, like focus, lighting and composing, personally, while refusing access to the set by all film editors, saying: "The editor can only edit what I am filming. He can't use a master shot if he doesn't have it. He can't make a close-up if he doesn't have it. This is our [his and Forman's] job." Critics have often admired Ondříček's success in sustaining low-contrast lighting throughout the film, rendering "a sweetly mysterious softness, as if a principle of compassion existed in the world alongside its cruelty".
  The big dance was the film's most sustained and elaborate sequence, so two cameras were used, with frequent recourse to hand-holding and telephoto zooming in order both to sustain the documentary-style look and feel and to take pressure off the performers, who were not always sure whether they were being included in the shots.
  During filming, the set was visited by British director Lindsay Anderson, whose film This Sporting Life was greatly admired by Forman. Anderson was so impressed by Ondříček's work, that he brought the cameraman to England to film The White Bus and if...., announcing that he had found a person with a new sensibility, “a new pair of eyes”.
  Ironically, the storyline of the film was replayed in real life. One of the nonprofessional actresses, a blonde factory worker, had a torrid affair with a technician who was part of the film crew. Although the man neglected to tell her that he was married with a child, he promised to send for her when he got back to Prague and set her up in an apartment in the capital city. After waiting for a long time to hear from him, and telling all her friends that she would shortly be summoned to her love nest, she packed up her belongings and traveled to Prague, only to be spurned in no uncertain terms. The consequence of this situation was grimmer than the denouement of the film; the girl was embarrassed to return home, became a prostitute, went to jail, attempted suicide and finally emigrated to Australia, where there was a shortage of women, especially among Czech emigrants.
caption: Zruč nad Sázavou was the location for much of the filming of Loves of a Blonde. According to Forman: “I remember those few months in Zruc-upon-Sazava as some of my sunniest days in the movie business. We had all the time we needed. We played billiards. We choked on laughter watching Pucholt fight his parents in the narrow double bed.”[14]
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