The emergence of a new wave of cinema in communist Czechoslovakia is one of the major cinematic themes of the late 60s. Some examples, such as Jiri Menzel’s Oscar-winning “Highly Watched Train,” were harrowing humanist comedies, such as Jan Nemec’s outright-banned “Report on Parties and Guests.” Others were anti-totalitarian allegories.
and there was “Daisy” Directed by Vera Chytilova from a script by Ester Krumbachova. Newly restored, it will be held at her IFC Center in Manhattan on Friday.
First shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in June 1967, Daisies received negative reviews from New York Times critic Bosley Crowther. Crowther, as if channeling a bewildered Czech apparatique, called the film “a bombastic weirdo, painstakingly exaggerated mod farce about two completely brainless playgirls.” pronounced. I may play a girl, but I may be empty-headed.
The work of two mature female artists, ‘Daisies’ translates as an anarchic intrigue featuring an overbearing pair of wild and crazy gals determined to be as ‘spoiled’ as the rest of the world. You can also
Marie I (Jitka Cherkhova) and Marie II (Ivana Karbanova), with their singing, obnoxious woody woodpecker cries, and jerky clown-like movements, suggest the two puppets are out of control doing. That they are played by non-professionals (one a student, one a sales girl) and appear to be egging each other gives the film, if not a documentary, an action subtext. increase.
Flexible and at the same time childish, Mary is a creature of impulse and appetite, primarily seeking food and destruction. One of them, picnicking in her bed, attacks sausage, baguettes, and banana lipastos, garnishing them with pyromaniac glee while brandishing scissors like Harpo in “Duck Soup” her Marx. Light the streamer. The spectacle of them sabotaging banal floor shows and harassing strained patrons in Prague nightclubs with drunken harassment is more amusing than anything in A Night At The Opera. Actually more interesting.
“Daisy” completely defies cinematic conventions. The nonchalant visual Razmataz may suggest an extreme version of Richard Lester’s mod comedy, but the film is mentally a modern transcendental film and a tribute to Carole Schneemann, Yayoi Kusama, It’s akin to Happening by artists like Barbara Rubin.
Yet, perhaps as a subsidized product of the rational socialist order, “Daisy” is more political in nature than something like Schneemann’s rowdy “Meat Joy.” Chytilova’s film is a nihilist provocation from start to finish. Among other funs, Mr. and Mrs. Marie accept dinner invitations from the exact kind of middle-aged man who could censor a movie. Like the “Daisies” themselves, they usually embarrass these stocky authority figures with their shameless gold digging and terrible table manners.
Indeed, despite numerous insults to patriarchy, it climax food fight That seems to have angered Czech officials the most. According to film historian Peter Haymes, the National Assembly accused Chichilova of wasting food at a time when farmers were struggling with agricultural production.
“Daisy” was shelved and briefly released, but was banned again after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. So is the director. Although she was eventually able to resume her career, Chitilova never made a film like Daisy. Neither has anyone else.
daisies
It will be held on Friday at the IFC Center in Manhattan. ifccenter.com.