Damned with faint praise: the movies Miloš Forman called “the best of Hollywood”
Even though his greatest successes and most enduring features came after he’d made the jump to Hollywood, Miloš Forman would never have dreamed of calling himself a Hollywood filmmaker.
It sounds counterintuitive, but he wouldn’t be the first – or last – auteur working under a major studio making high-profile films boasting major stars who’d bristle at the idea he was directing neatly packaged slabs of mass-marketed entertainment designed to make as much money as possible.
Obviously, that’s the name of the game at the end of the day, yet for somebody who made a very good living for themselves in the Hollywood system, he was plenty dismissive of it. A key figure in the ‘Czechoslovak New Wave’, Forman was already a veteran by the time he’d even pitched up Stateside.
1971 comedy Taking Off was Forman’s fifth directorial credit, but his first backed by an American entity after Universal Pictures handled distribution. It was a case of easing himself into an entirely different type of process, though, but his next movie made it perfectly clear that he was a fast learner.
One of the greatest films ever made, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won him an Academy Award for ‘Best Director’, and snatched four other prizes, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Actor’ for Jack Nicholson. Anti-war dramedy Hair was a box office hit, literary adaptation Ragtime notched eight Oscar nods, and eight-time Oscar winner Amadeus netted him another ‘Best Director’ gong in a ‘Best Picture’ winner.
By the mid-1980s, Forman was one of the biggest directors in the business. However, he’d stuck to his guns and refused to be seduced by the lure of Hollywood in the traditional sense, and it was a mindset he’d been operating under since long before he’d even set foot on an American set.
In a 1970 interview with Film Comment that came before he’d even started shooting Taking Off, the auteur highlighted that in order to succeed in Tinseltown, he needed to be in control. “They are now starting to understand in Hollywood that, for the good result of a film, the director today is much more important than many, many stars,” he said. Fortunately, he was in the right place at the right time.
Even though he voiced his concerns over how “they don’t understand that the director must do what he likes to do,” his arrival in America coincided with the apex of the ‘New Hollywood’ movement. Forman was perfectly placed to maintain autonomy even when working with nationwide corporations, and he had the chance to do it without having to compromise his artistic integrity.
Mike Nichols’ The Graduate had released three years previously and was a resounding victory for all involved in a critical, commercial, and creative sense, but when Forman called it “the best of Hollywood,” he wasn’t being entirely complimentary. “I think it’s good, but it’s Hollywood,” he explained. “If there’s something that bothers me in this film, it’s the Hollywood in it, but as a film, it’s good.”
He enjoyed The Graduate, but if there was one major issue he had with the film, it was “the Hollywood.” It’s a vaguely-defined criticism to put it lightly, but Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde did at least gain a modicum of more concrete praise. Forman liked that one “very much,” even if it “also has a Hollywood-type image.”
In essence, Forman was a director who moved to Hollywood, directed several phenomenal movies that were backed, funded, and distributed by Hollywood studios, reached the pinnacle of the American industry twice over with his ‘Best Director’ Oscars, never made an independent film again after he decamped to the States, and yet still wasn’t entirely enamoured by Hollywood.
Of course, it’s entirely possible to thrive in a system despite actively trying to fight against it, something Forman displayed beyond all doubt when he continually utilised the components inherent to a Hollywood production without running the risk of becoming absorbed – or spat out – by the machine.
