The Beautiful Chaos of Daisies

 Vera Chytilovà’s Daisies follows the story of two women who decided that since the world is already in chaos they will cause more chaos themselves. This leads to a string of events with very little narrative cohesion in which they run around pulling pranks and causing general disruption in their day to day lives. This includes interrupting a performance at a bar and interrupting each other’s dates to get free food. They also set paper in their apartment on fire, cut up phallic looking food with scissors, and slowly covering their walls with more and more pictures, slowly becoming papered in drawings and cutouts.  

 

The film is full of feminist rebellion, other than just looking very fun to do, all of the pranks the girls engage in go against what is expected of a woman to fit into normal society. They unapologetically embrace their femininity through dressing in baby doll dresses (of the 60s fashion), wearing flower crowns, and outfits that show their body in a free way. (which would have been controversial at the time.) And the eyeliner! As the film goes on their eyeliner becomes bigger and bigger, their eyes becoming more cartoonish, rejecting the expectation of women to be effortlessly beautiful and wear makeup men will find attractive. They dress and act solely for themselves, and the result is thrilling. One of the girls also wears a flower crown which she puts on peoples heads and wears around to different reactions. One of the men they eat dinner with wears it proudly, skewed on this head. What looks so natural on her is comedic on him, especially when juxtaposed with his suit. This femininity is declared at the very start of the film, where they two girls repeat, “I’m a doll! I’m a doll!”. Rather than using their beauty in their favor as they are expected to, they weaponize it. Another way they reject their femininity is through their eating. At the start of the film one of them eats with wild abandon, saying, “can you believe she is scared of getting fat?” By the end of the film they have both abandoned this delicacy, taking over a feast and filling heaping plates of the most luxurious food, eating with their hands and dancing from the table. They dress up in curtains and swing from chandeliers in a hedonistic frenzy. Overall a party I’d want to attend. 

 

However the Czech government did not see it that way and banned the film, according to The New York Times for “wasting food at a time when farmers were struggling with agricultural production.” However Bliss Cua Lum writing in Camera Obscura in 2001 quotes the reason being “having nothing to in common with our republic, socialism, and the ideals of communism.” Which seems a bit more likely. However, girls just want to have fun and clearly the film ended up gaining traction despite the ban. 

 

Chytilovà employs a number of techniques in this film, but most obvious and strange is her use of color in the film, not in the outfits or sets but the actual saturation of the movie. Parts are in color and black and white, which can be seen in many films, but it will also quickly switch between orange, green, and blue. The chaos in the film goes beyond the girls actions but bleeds into the editing as well. The vignettes of the girls chaos has very little narrative structure between, but clearly their actions are not meant to make sense. They are however, imbued with metaphor. The phallic symbolism of the cutting of sausages and boiled eggs, as well as the recurring theme of apples have many possible interpretations, but I belive they stem from adam and eve. Them carelessly eating the apples and throwing them around show a disregard for the expectations and rules put on them as women, like everything else they do, it is throwing their freedom in the face of those watching. 

I might make another post talking about other aspects of Daisies, as it has so much to unpack. But for now I’ll discuss my main takeaways and things I’d like to try in my own film. I found the vignettes and montage to be something I was already thinking about for my own film, but seeing the freedom and excess of this film has made me start to think beyond the simple ideas I had before, and take into consideration the use of sets and excessive props, The montages of pictures in between scenes were also beautiful and would give me an opportunity to incorporate mixed media. I was already planning on having 60s inspires clothes and makeup but this is a great reference point to use when considering costumes. I might also do a few camera tests and try and incorporate the way Chytilovà plays with the saturation and filling a whole screen with color. While it may not fit into my overall plan it is definitely something worth exploring.