Tonight I rewatched Daisies, a flamboyant, reckless, anarchic whirlwind of a film that was released in Czechoslovakia right at the end of 1966, won a festival award or two, amazed audiences fortunate enough to see it, and quickly (also predictably) ran into trouble with the Communist authorities, who objected to the sheer wasteful indulgence and wildness of what they saw. That friction led to prolonged periods of censorship that made the film mostly unavailable for many years, and also made life a bit more difficult for its fearless director Vera Chytilova. The notoriety of its reputation and the curiosity to see what all the fuss was about has helped Daisies develop a fervent cult following over the years, and my hunch is that it has rarely disappointed those who at least had some idea of what they were getting into and liked what they'd heard: a gaudy loop of chaos, aggressively sexy and quasi-psychedelic, with a feminist bohemian sensibility that utilizes cut-ups, collage, montage, absurd humor and sly political satire to confront viewers and take them out of their cinematic comfort zone. Though Daisies probably doesn't deliver quite the jolt that it must have in 1966, I think it's still capable of provoking us out of our "seen it all" complacency when we pause to consider what Chytilova expressed, beyond the rampant lunacy of the girls' bratty and unhinged behavior pretty much from start to finish in the film.
I first saw the film back in 2012, shortly after Criterion had released it as part of their Pearls of the Czech New Wave Eclipse Series set, and I reviewed it right around the time that Daisies was making the rounds in a national release sponsored by Janus Films. Here's the link to my first take on the film, and other than a minor tweak of the text and embedding a fresh video clip (not the one I originally included, which has apparently been pulled from YouTube), I don't see the need to change anything, or embellish too much on what I said there. The lingering thought that sits with me now, that I'm still processing and will continue to mull over until Trevor Berrett and I get around to recording a new episode of our Eclipse Viewer podcast on this set later this summer, is how Chytilova weaves together the themes of food and sex and war, all connected as different manifestations of this urge to satisfy basic impulses through raw consumption, regardless of the destructive effect it has on others.
The two young women that the film focuses on are persuaded (by lots of tangible evidence) that the world they live in is irrevocably spoiled, and they decide to likewise do their worst in response to a situation they don't feel they had any responsibility for creating. Recognizing their own desirability in the eyes of older (and married) men, who primarily view them as adornments and erotic playthings, they return the exploitative favor and engage in a series of comical pranks that debase, frustrate and humiliate the gents who pursue them. The stunts leave the girls laughing as they revel in their own cleverness, but the thrill quickly wears off and they find themselves depressed and depleted soon afterward. All they can do is repeat the cycle and continue to look for new variations on the art of the tease. Eventually, after noticing that nobody is noticing them, they abandon the sexual political games and opt for all-out gluttony, gorging themselves on a splendid meal without taking a moment to appreciate the goodness of the experience or the flavors, almost as if they're racing against time to gobble up as much as they can before their orgy is interrupted or they lose the capacity to feel any more. Soon enough, the roof caves in on them and they meet the fate that they've been courting all along. Images of violent explosions that opened the film now return, with cataclysmic rumbles of doom continuing to reverberate even after the screen fades to black.
This is a wildly subversive, visually dazzling, often amusing, highly entertaining and occasionally hilarious film, but also quite angry, sad and hurting beneath the surface. Much more to grapple with here than just a crazy uninhibited romp.
Anyway, here's a music video fan edit mash-up of highlights from the film, with a soundtrack by the 1980s pop band Bow Wow Wow: