One snowy February a small-town annual volunteer firemen’s ball is announced—with music, dancing, a raffle, a beauty pageant, and a special award. Everything is going well until it doesn’t, and to top it off, the nearby house of an old man catches fire…

A playful comedy that unfolds into a tragic farce. There is no shortage of people with dim wits, sticky fingers, and little shame. The script was based on the madness experienced at a real firemen’s ball. Miloš Forman himself said in a 1970 interview: ‘This is a problem for all governments, for all committees. That they try and they pretend and they announce that they are preparing a happy, gay, amusing evening or life for the people. And everybody has the best intentions… But suddenly things turn out in such a catastrophic way that, for me, this is a vision of what’s going on today in the world.’ This film can be interpreted in various ways, including as political commentary, and in 1973 the communist regime ‘banned it forever’.