Loves of a Blonde
By Dave Kehr
When Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde had its American premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1966, it was an immediate sensation. Nothing quite as fresh and apparently spontaneous had appeared on the scene since François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows seven years earlier. Bosley Crowther, the chronically stuffy chief critic of The New York Times, flew into uncharacteristic paroxysms of pleasure, describing it as “delightfully simple and sure. It is hopeful—but realistic. And full of delicious characters.”
Usually, when a film achieves instant acceptance, that means there is something wrong with it—that it is too obvious, too sentimental, or too eager to please. None of this is true of Loves of a Blonde, which remains an amazing balancing act of subtle social satire and adolescent romantic longing, of blank despair and irrepressible hope. After re…