FORMAN, MILOS

FORMAN, MILOS (1932– ), Czech-American film director. Forman's early years were spent in a town near Prague, where his father was a teacher. Both his parents, including his non-Jewish mother, were murdered in Auschwitz. In 1963 he made Black Peter, in 1964, Loves of a Blonde, a film distributed and internationally acclaimed. The Fireman's Ball (1968), a wry treatment of Czech bureaucracy, effected its own irony when it caused 40,000 fireman to quit after Novotny released the film. All were appeased when Forman offered his own critical interpretation (a parody in itself) of the film as broad allegory. Forman moved to Hollywood in 1970 and subsequently directed such films as Taking Off (1971), One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which was only the second film in cinema history to win all five major Academy Awards, Hair (1979), Ragtime (1981), Amadeus (1984), which again won Forman Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director, and Valmont (1989). Later films include The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Manon the Moon (1999). (Jonathan Licht)