"We're both so happy! Say that we're happy."
August 1, 2014 7:52 PM   Subscribe

"One of the most exhilarating cinematic works of the Czechoslovak New Wave is Vera Chytilová's 1966 film, Daisies, the story of two young women who declare the world is spoiled and rotten, and so make a pact that they will be too." -- Katarina Soukup, "Banquet of Profanities." "In a 1966 interview, Chytilová described Daisies as a 'philosophical documentary in the form of a farce,' a 'bizarre comedy with strands of satire and sarcasm.'" -- Bliss Cua Lim, "Dolls in Fragments." posted by Monsieur Caution (8 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
Chytilova was a tremendous and often overlooked filmmaker. It is also strangely warming to see this here on the day of Farocki's death.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 8:23 PM on August 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


Having watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) this film recently, my ladyfriend found these paper dress-up dolls of the Maries. Why, yes, we do have many cardstock Maries around the house.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:42 PM on August 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


Wow, I saw this Ina film class in around 1991, always wanted to see it again as many of tevimages haunted me since. Thank you!
posted by chapps at 9:46 PM on August 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I had the good fortune to catch a number of the hard-to-see movies at the Chytilova retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, which left me even more impressed by her career and sadder that so many of her films are hard-to-impossible to find in the US. PANELSTORY is amazing---a Soviet-bloc Altman movie with a great warmth and humor. And her low-budget children's sci-fi/horror flick WOLF CHALET is delightful, with the best Communist happy ending of all time.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 10:47 PM on August 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


So let me tell you a little story about how I was on a European Women’s Studies study abroad program in 2006, and we were in the Czech Republic and watched this movie for class one day, and then had a Q&A with Věra Chytilová (our professor had fab connections with cool famous people), and she asked our little group what we thought the message of the movie was, and we were all like, “Well, obviously these two cute anarchist babies are trying to throw off the oppressive yoke of their sexist Communist oppressors,” and she was like, “[enigmatic little smile] No, you are all wrong, but it’s ok because you’re only stupid Americans who know nothing,” and our minds were kind of blown, and then that afternoon, when some of us were on the tram on our way to our homestays, she got on with us, and when she got off at her stop, she turned around and waved goodbye to us like the adorable little old ladybug that she was.
posted by catch as catch can at 3:38 AM on August 2, 2014 [12 favorites]


Just here to say OMFGBBQ I lOVE THIS MOVIE SO CRAZY MUCH.

That is all.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 7:21 AM on August 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Ugh, this fucking movie. It came off like a smug variant on John Waters' grotesqueries. The fact that the Maries played their anarchism as though they were cognitively disabled really creeped me out, on top of Chytilova's self-satisfied tone. If I'm going to watch feminist cinema, I'm much more interested in Agnes Varda's morally ambiguous protagonists or Claire Denis's ambivalence towards French colonialism or Bette Gordon's regard for porn and the ways the patriarchy hurts men and women. Not a pair of baby-talking, booger-eating brats.
posted by pxe2000 at 8:15 AM on August 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


I also watched this for a film class. Afterwards I decided that I *had* to keep the visuals somehow, so I went out and rented the DVD and ripped it to my laptop and learned how to use Photoshop blend modes so I could make livejournal icons. What impressed me at the time were that all of the crazy color filters and desaturations and overlays and so on in the film were done by hand.
posted by subdee at 9:08 AM on August 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


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