Film director who won an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Born: February 18, 1932;
Died: April 13, 2018
MILOŠ Forman, who has died aged 86, survived the loss of both parents in Nazi concentration camps, self-imposed political exile from Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and the commercial failure of his first Hollywood film, before going on to win the Oscar for best director not once, but on two occasions.
He had established himself with international critics and discerning arthouse audiences, but was hardly a household name in the West, when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968 and ended the period of liberalisation known as the Prague Spring. Forman was in Paris at the time and it would be many years before he returned to the land of his birth.
His first American film Taking Off (1971) flopped and it would be several years before his next full-length feature, after fledgling film producer Michael Douglas approached him to direct a film of Ken Kesey’s subversive, tragic-comic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).
It was only the second film in Oscar history to win the big five – best picture, director, actor (Jack Nicholson), actress (Louise Fletcher), and one of the screenplay awards.
Forman was never prolific – he made nine feature films in a 35-year Hollywood career. But his fifth American film Amadeus, a fictionalised account about the deadly rivalry between composers Mozart and Salieri, was to bring him a second Academy Award and dominate the 1984 Oscars, winning eight, including best picture.
He was born Jan Tomáš Forman in 1932 in the town of ?áslav in what is now the Czech Republic. The couple who he regarded as his parents were teachers. They were arrested for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda during the Second World War and died in concentration camps.
Forman would later discover that his biological father was a Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust. Forman attended a boarding school for war orphans, though many fellow pupils were the children of politicians and officials. One schoolfriend was the future playwright and president Vaclav Havel.
Forman’s original ambition was to be a sports commentator or work in theatre and his introduction to film-making was actually a documentary about a Prague theatre company. That led to Audition (1963), a film in which Forman and the theatre’s artistic directors set up a fake audition for a singing role.
His most notable film before his move to America was The Fireman’s Ball (1967), which was ostensibly a comedy about an ill-fated dance in a provincial town, though film critics and Communist censors quickly spotted that it could also be interpreted as a satire on Communism.
Having relocated to the US, where he would eventually become a citizen, Forman made Taking Off, which attempted to tap into dramatic social changes. In the film middle-aged parents seek an understanding of the new youth culture, including smoking marijuana.
The film did so badly that he wound up owing the studio money, according to Forman. He lived in New York’s Chelsea Hotel on a dollar a day, which he would spend on a can of chilli con carne and a bottle of beer.
Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came out in 1962 and in retrospect its story, set in a psychiatric hospital, captured the mood of rebellion of the late 1960s and early 1970s rather better than Taking Off. It was turned into a play the following year.
Kirk Douglas, who played the anti-hero Randle McMurphy on Broadway, snapped up the screen rights and spent a decade trying to get a film off the ground before passing the task on to his son. Both men were admirers of Forman’s work. Michael tracked Forman down and gave him a second chance to make his mark in Hollywood.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest cost around $3-4 million and grossed more than $100 million on its North American cinema release.
Forman directed film versions of Hair (1979), which also tapped into youth culture, though the film failed to make the impact that the original stage musical had done a decade earlier, and Ragtime (1981), an expensive adaptation of EL Doctorow’s historical novel that struggled to recoup its budget.
But Forman struck gold again with his next movie. A historical film about an 18th century composer might have seemed a strange move from a man who had spent so much of his career challenging established values both in Czechoslovakia and the US, but Amadeus effectively turned the genre of respectful composer biopics on its head, with a characterisation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that owed more to vintage John McEnroe than to any previous portrayal of a composer on screen. Facing off against him in a powerful psychological drama was Antonio Salieri, who is more successful, but recognises Mozart as the greater talent.
Forman went to see the original London West End stage version by chance, accepting an invitation to the theatre without knowing what he was going to see. He was dismayed when told it was a play about composers.
“I am sitting in the theatre waiting to fall asleep,” he said, “and suddenly I see this wonderful drama.” Forman shot the film in Prague and it was another critical and commercial triumph.
His next film Valmont (1989) had the misfortune of coming out just a year after Dangerous Liaisons, which was based on the same French novel. Later films, including The People vs Larry Flynt (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999), sparked interest and debate, but failed to repeat the success of earlier Oscar winners.
Forman’s first two marriages were to Czechoslovakian actresses, Jana Brejchová, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and Vera Kresadlova, to whom he was married for more than 30 years. Both marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife Martina Zborilova, a film student who he helped with her graduation thesis, and by four children.
BRIAN PENDREIGH
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