Daisies Vera Chytilova

The blond Marie and brunette alter-ego in daisies vera chytilova romp through good society – or spoof it, depending on your point of view. From playing odd pranks on men to gluttonously over-eating in fancy restaurants, the Maries eviscerate existing expectations of how women should behave. But they can only do so against the backdrop of real life and a more or less lucid picture of war.

The film, which was only Chytilova’s second feature, is often viewed as the most formally radical and politically subversive of a movement known as the Czechoslovak New Wave (which also included Milos Forman, Ji Menzel, Jan Nemec, and others). The filmmakers of this wave rebelled against the straightforward morality tales of officially mandated socialist realism with dark, absurdist satires about the indignities of daily life under Communism.

For example, the montage at the opening of daisies vera chytilova alternates shots of a factory machine with images of a bombed-out city — masculine subjects that are used to represent production and destruction respectively. This juxtaposition might seem to suggest that the sexy, dissipated Maries are destroying things but only because they’re trying to create something else out of them.

Yet to frame it this way misses the point of the film, which was not merely to critique a rotten system but also to offer a vision of alternative ways of living. The giggling Maries’ endless pranks might be thought of as the antithesis to productivity-obsessed official Communist ideology, but they are rooted in a relentless inventiveness that ultimately makes their destructiveness productive, as well.