Daisies by Vera Chytilovà: a philosophical farce
Lounging in silky pastel underwear, upstaging dancers at a club, pranking older men to pay for fancy dinners, or suddenly doing choreographies in a dreaming field of apple trees…. The narrative of the twinned heroines of Daisies could not be more enchanting. In this experimental film made of black and white scenes interspersed with coloured filters and strange fragmented editing, the blond Mari and her brunette alter-ego agree that since the world is so spoiled and destructive, they’ll be too. Playing odd pranks around Prague, the hedonist adolescents assail the opulence and seriousness of the party members in a joyful journey of nonsense.
In a messy room where the walls are covered with magazine cutouts, phone numbers, and flower engravings, the two characters have fun burning slips of paper attached to their ceiling to cook sausages. Lying in the same bed the girls engage in a trivial snack made of eggs and pickles before starting to chew steak pictures cut out of advertisement.
Loosely connected, these scenes of anarchic amusement unmask the moral issues of the Czech society of the time. All along the movie Mari I and II do nothing else than play, play with their food, with magazines, with their lovers, with everyone that they encounter and foremost with each other. Their behaviour represents the rebellion against all the fake gravity and earnestness of the party society. And they embody the youth of consumption in a world that is about to be free.
Directed by Vera Chytilovà, Daisies is one of the most vibrant films of the Czechoslovakian New Wave. She was born in 1929 in the small town of Ostrava, studied philosophy and architecture, before doing a series of odd jobs: fashion model, photo editor and clapper girl in a film studio in Prague. She continued there as a writer and an actress before finally assisting directors. These flourishing experiences pushed her to enroll in the renowned Prague Film Academy where she met other talented film directors such as Jiří Menzel with whom she made blacked humor films that satirized the communist society. Vera Chytilovà is known as the “First Lady of Czech Cinema '', because she was the first woman to gain recognition for her cinematographic work in the country. She created delightfully exuberant and thought-provoking movies that remain significant over the years.
Wearing the same lace tops in different colours, the girls start to cut each other’s heads with scissors. Adorned with a flower crown, the floating head of Mari I asks if the play might be a problem.“Absolutely not” respond giggling Mari II. Chasing each other around their bed with the same scissors in hands, the screen suddenly turns a filmic artifice into thousands of pieces.
Discovering a beyond-belief banquet set out for party officials, the girls, who are obsessed with food since the beginning of the movie, turn completely delirious. They ransack the feast, dip their hands fully in the meals, lick their fingers greedily before starting a food fight. Fully sated, they turn the huge table of the banquet into a fashion stage, crushing the plates and the meals under their high heel shoes, ripping off the curtains to make dresses. Then, suddenly drowning in the sea, the young duo shout to redeem their previous behaviour. “Even if they had a chance, it would look like this” is written on the screen when Mari I and II enter the banquet room with strange jumpsuits made of newspapers, carrying a broom in each hand. They actively tidy and clean up the room, placing broken pieces of plates and glasses on the table, recreating the dishes and the cakes with the rest of the mashed food. Finally finished, they lay in the middle of the table proud of their cleaning. “We are really happy,” gleefully proclaims short hair blond Mari, “But it doesn’t matter” responds the brunette before the huge chandelier fatally crushes the two young girls and a nuclear explosion appears on the screen.
The movie was immediately banned by the apparatchiks citing in particular the food wastage and destruction. Vera Chytilovà knew that hypocrite critics would be offended by such anarchic excess while closing their eyes on greater issues, thus she decided to end the movie with the ironical dedication “To all those whose sole source of indignation is a trampled-on trifle”. The film was still released a year later and won the Grand Prix of the Bergamo Film Festival. In 1968 with the rebellion of the Prague Spring and the hardening of the Russian occupation a lot of artists flee Czechoslovakia. Vera Chytilovà remained. She called Daisies “a philosophical documentary in the form of a farce” . She was accused of nihilism and shortly after, she was banned from making films for six years.
With a great deal of humor, bold symbolism and eye-catching subterfuge the movie also shines through the beauty of its aesthetic. Helped by talented stage and costume designer Ester Krumbachova, Vera Chytilovà created scenes that are reminiscent of the classical painting’s nymph, mythical women in light drapery acting in natural frameworks. The modern twist remains the black-eyed make-up that the girls are incessantly retouching and the mini 60s dresses.
In 1976, she was asked to direct films for a state’s owned production company. In parallel, the American Year of Women Film Festival began a petition to pressure Czech government to let Vera Chytilovà go see the screening of her movie Daisies at the opening of the festival. This international call pushed the film director to write a letter to the Czech President and she soon began to film The Apple Game, a feminist comedy about a country girl. The film later won the Silver Hugo Chicago International Film Festival and many other prizes all across Europe. She then continued to make films true to herself in a still deeply censored environment, before teaching at the Prague film Academy, the place where she had discovered her passion for cinema years before. All along her life, Vera Chytilovà was ahead of her time, criticising with a sensible intelligence her imprisoned government, making fun of some gender attitude, and mainly allowing her viewer to access a world of critical creativity, and reflexive fun in activist entertainment.