Daisies
by Vera Chytilov?
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Actor: Ivana Karbanov?, Jirina Myskova, Jitka Cerhov?, Marcela Brezinova, Marie Ceskov?Director: Vera Chytilov?
Brand: FACETS VIDEO
Cinematographer: Jaroslav Kucera
Writer: Vera Chytilov?
Editor: Miroslav H?jek
Writer: Ester Krumbachov?
Writer: Pavel Jur?cek
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Czech (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 74 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-03-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Facets
DVD Reviews of Daisies
DVD Review: Anarchic, subversive, feminist, and a bit too long
Summary: 3 Stars
Director Vera Chytilova's anarchic feminist film from the mid 1960s (right before the Czech new wave movement was broken by the Soviet Invasion that ended the Prague Spring) is hard to describe in terms of plot. Basically, it's about the various antics and gags of two young women. The victims of their practical jokes tend to be established society in general (which exists even in a socialist system as was Czechoslovakia at the time), and older men in particular. Aggressively experimental, the movie uses several types of film stocks, even in a single scene, as well as in your face editing cuts. There are several anti-phallic gags (with the girls cutting while giggling sausages, bananas, etc.) as well as an apocalyptic food fight at the end. It's fun, subversive, but even at a running time of less than half an hour, tiresome at times. DVD Review: It you're looking for a typical storyline and plot development...
Summary: 4 Stars
...You may be confused by this movie, or be forced to do a lot of explaining to any others invited to watch with you. Taken as a whole, however, it's one of the most entertaining, off-kilter, creative, and kaleidescopic films I've ever seen. Trying to decipher a plot from Marie I's and Marie II's bizarre antics is beside the point, though I would recommend renting before you buy.DVD Review: We Exist! We Exist!
Summary: 3 Stars
We have all watched bad films. We have all watched films that have made us want to retch. I remember the first time that I and a couple of my friends watched Valerie Breiman's Going Overboard (1989) and that the viewing experience drained us so much that not one of us could sit up near the end of the film. The film that almost enraged me because it was so bad was Alejandro Jodorowsky's Fando y Lis (1968). Unlike the previous film which was just bad, this film tried to pass itself off as some higher art form, but was nothing more than worthless schlock in this viewer's opinion. When I first became aware of V?ra Chytilov?'s Daisies (1966) I was at first worried that I was going to encounter another film like Jodorowsky's, but I was pleasantly surprised with the film. I in no way understood the film the first time I watched through it, but I was intrigued enough by the film's cinematography and its bouncy actresses to give the film a second watch and while I still did not truly comprehend the film, I did still enjoy it the second time through.
I believe the main problem that I suffered while watching this film is the combined issue of my lack of familiarity with 1960s Czechoslovakian history and film. New Wave film was spreading in England, France, and Japan, but it was also making headway into Czechoslovakia. However, although there was a New Wave of film, it was primarily dominated by men who used quite formulaic cinematic techniques. V?ra Chytilov? turned these films over on their heads when she directed Daisies amongst other films with her utter destruction of prosaic film techniques. Yet, while her film techniques are definitely something to be noted, critics mainly praise her for challenging Czechoslovakian gender roles as well.
Daisies opens with shifting scenes of industrial and war stock footage: the process of creation with its inevitable destruction and the continuous flow of this situation. The audience is then introduced to Marie I and Marie II: two girls dressed in bathing suits whose bodies mimic those of Robots. They converse and come to the decision that the world has gone bad and so they will go bad also. However, their version of going bad consists of a stream of sugar daddies who they literally eat out of house and home. When they are not eating in restaurants, the girls are also eating in their apartments and other places. This hunger definitely symbolizes an inner vacuity that they cannot fill. However, what is this void? I believe that it is their powerlessness to really have an effect on their environs. Continuously throughout the film they question their own existence, and are even unseen by or completely ignored by a farmer and a group of men on bikes. Are they truly invisible or is it their gender induced position in society that makes them into robotic automatons?
Daisies is a chaotic film. Daisies is a nonsensical film. One could even argue that Daisies is a horrible film, but without a strong plot or linear storytelling, Daisies delves a bit deeper into the being of an individual that desires release from the strictures of society as a whole. While definitely not for everyone, I recommend this film to those who are interested in 1960s experimental film as a whole.
DVD Review: Visually appealing but little else
Summary: 2 Stars
Visually appealing but without much of a plot or acting talent. Not nearly as good as "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders".DVD Review: "This film is dedicated --
Summary: 4 Stars
-- to those whose sole source of indignation is a messed up trifle."
The opening credits play against explosive examples of military destruction, accompanied by a toy drum and kazoo-like trumpet, or so it sounds. That summarizes a lot of the movie: childish destruction, silly pranks, and surrealist nonsequiturs. The big one in that last category is the culminating scene, a ruined dining room, with table cloth, napkins, and walls soaked in the residue of a food fight, the table set with broken china and glassware - and with the protagonists themselves, in bodysuits of newspaper tied tightly with strings.
Throughout it all, though, the two young women retain girly wiggling, ponderous false eyelashes, and eye makeup nearly equal to a domino mask. They are miniskirted artifacts of the mod 60s, speaking to the audience in some private language of pigtails, flowered coronets, and green apples. I'm not quite sure how this movie came to be called "feminist," except maybe, back then, "good girls" didn't bilk sugar daddies out of expensive meals or avoid expensive tabs by being bounced out of the bar - or not where they could be seen.
I don't mean to sound negative - unless that's what the director intended. It's joyous and disjoint, trippy with blinking chromatic changes and acid motion trails. It's irreverent and iconoclastic, but stops short of human harm. And it's filled with a cultural background - 1960s Czechoslovakia - that I could never have known. It's a brief (70 minute) adventure, and you'll come away grateful that you're not the one cleaning up the mess.
And no, I'm not the least bit indignant, but I did have to round up to give this four whole stars.
//wiredweird
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