Review of Black Peter (1964) by Edgar C — 18 Jul 2014

Come aboard Forman's extremely funny comedy and learn to correctly pronunciate "hello" in Czech:

AHOJ.

AHOOOOJJJ.

AHHOOOOOOOOJJJJJJ.

*mumbles Ahoj*.

AHHHOOOOOOOOOOJJJJJJJ!!!!

Ahoj.

With his first official fully fictional feature length movie, Milos Forman just made what is unquestionably one of the funniest films of the entire Czech New Wave.

Forman consolidated his comedic trademark vision with Cerny Petr, where the humor started to emanate in the most subtle of ways, but always very explicitly, mostly consisting in marital disagreements, domestic settings, verbal puns and a parentally misguided youth reminiscent of Truffaut's Nouvelle Vague origins in 1959. This time, the performances look more experienced and less hesitant, the screenwriting seems more carefully planned, the pacing is more adequate and the gags are timed perfectly, from the visual to the intrinsic and the verbal ones.

At the core, this can be seen as a humorous analysis of youth in a changing society, simultaneous to the change of the Czechoslovak nation during the 60s and the change of cinema as well. Beyond that, it is much more. To begin with, it was the necessary stepping stone for the director's vision to be perfected, and for his collaboration with Ivan Passer (director of Intimate Lighting [1965]) to be consolidated. Looking at Passer's 1965 debut, it is easy to spot his visual and mood influences of humor in Cerny Petr. After writing Konkurs (1964), he would then proceed to help with the screenplay of Forman's two subsequent masterpieces, Loves of a Blonde (1965) and Firemen's Ball (1967).

Secondly, this film is the first notorious effort by Forman to technically adopt the eccentricities of the international New Wave movement, with more French influence than anything else. With improvised dialogues, jumpy cuts, a hand-held camera, a couple of art references, and in-door evolvement of situations, this film proved to be an important step forwards in the director's vision and capacity to envision comedic material to be adapted to film.

Fully recommended but with full attention from the audience to capture as much of the subtle humor as possible, Cerny Petr is a multi-faceted bold piece of comedy with most of its goals successfully accomplished for the sake of cinema evolution and comedic experimentation.

80/100.