Milos FORMAN - The Firemen\'s Ball (1967) CRITERION

The members of a Czechoslovakian town's volunteer fire brigade have organized a ball for the town, it which will include lotteries for a number of prizes that are prominently displayed on a table, the prizes guarded by one of their elderly members. At the center of the ball will be a presentation made to the now eighty-six year old former chair of the brigade of an ornamental ax. While they have long thought about giving him such a gift for his service, they don't want the appearance that they are only doing so now because he has cancer, the diagnosis about which they know but something they believe he himself has not been told. With a photograph in hand of all the young ladies of the town, most of who are at the ball, the "entertainment committee" comes up with an idea to hold a beauty pageant, choosing only eight of the young ladies in attendance to compete - they scanning the room to make their selections - with the ultimate winner of the pageant having the honor of making the presentation of the ax to the former chair. As the evening progresses, one thing after another goes wrong with the ball itself, with the organizers determined to go on as planned, even as disaster of a nature associated with them strikes outside of their four walls.