Stalker (1979)

Discussed on Novmeber 11th, 2025

Before the First Frame

Daisies (1966)

Two girls laugh, and the world starts to unravel

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Marie I and Marie II are bored. So they decide that since the world is spoiled, they will be spoiled too. They eat, drink, tease men, cut up sausages, cut up themselves, cut up the image on screen. Věra Chytilová’s Daisies is not a story so much as a riot, a prank staged against patriarchy, propriety, and even the film medium itself. The question is not whether their rebellion makes sense, it is whether any sense survives the chaos they leave behind.

The Close Up

Looking Deeper for Context, Insight, and Legacy

Film Identity & Production Context

To understand the anarchic force of Daisies, one must first examine the unique conditions of its creation. Forged within a state-controlled studio system during a brief, electrifying moment of cultural thaw, the film's identity is a paradox: a state-funded work of art dedicated to dismantling all forms of authority. Its production was not merely a process of filmmaking but an act of aesthetic insurgency, where every technical and creative choice contributed to its radical ends. This section details the film's core metadata, chronicles its production, analyzes its peculiar relationship with commercial performance, charts its path from banned object to canonical masterpiece, and categorizes its defiant place in cinema history.

Metadata

Original Title: Sedmikrásky (Czech for "Daisies")
English Title: Daisies
Year of Release: 1966
Director: Věra Chytilová
Country of Origin: Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic)
Language: Czech
Runtime: Approximately 76 minutes
Studio/Distributor: Filmové Studio Barrandov (production); Ústřední půjčovna filmů (original domestic distribution)
Rating & Implications: The film was not subject to a modern ratings system but was quickly condemned and banned by the Czechoslovak government. A Member of Parliament, Jaroslav Pružinec, famously denounced it in the National Assembly for its "food wastage" at a time when farmers were struggling, a critique that completely missed the film's symbolic intent. This official condemnation functions as its most telling "rating," certifying its status as a politically dangerous and socially indigestible work.

Production Timeline & Details

The production of Daisies was a confluence of radical talent operating at the peak of the Czechoslovak New Wave's creative ferment.

Development & Screenplay: The film's conceptual genesis was a collaboration between Chytilová and Ester Krumbachová, a formidable artistic force who served as co-writer, costume designer, and art director. Rejecting conventional narrative from the outset, they envisioned the film as a "philosophical documentary in the form of a farce." The screenplay was less a traditional plot and more of a structural blueprint for a series of escalating provocations. The central idea of two women who decide to mirror the world's "spoiled" nature was a framework upon which they could hang their visual gags, critiques, and aesthetic experiments.
Filming & Cinematography: Principal photography was handled by Chytilová’s then-husband, cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, one of the most innovative cameramen of the era. His work is inseparable from the film's meaning. Together, they launched a full-scale assault on visual continuity. They employed a dizzying array of techniques: scenes abruptly shift from black-and-white to color; garish, single-color filters are applied seemingly at random; film stocks of different grains are juxtaposed; and optical effects like solarization and kaleidoscopic prisms fracture the image. This was not stylistic indulgence but a deliberate strategy to keep the viewer disoriented, to deny the comfort of passive viewing, and to mirror the protagonists' fragmented, hedonistic perception of reality.
Post-Production: The film's anarchic spirit was fully realized in the editing room. Chytilová and editor Miroslav Hájek utilized aggressive jump cuts, mismatched shots, and a collage-like assembly that defies spatial and temporal logic. The sound design is equally disruptive, mixing snippets of dialogue, exaggerated sound effects (the "boing" of the Maries' puppet-like movements), and a score by Jiří Šust and Jiří Šlitr that veers from carnivalesque ditties to jarring, modernist compositions. This audiovisual collage prevents any sense of narrative immersion, constantly reminding the audience of the film's constructed, artificial nature.
Production Obstacles: While the film was produced under the state-run umbrella of the famed Barrandov Studios, which paradoxically gave Chytilová access to high-quality resources, the production was fraught with conflict. The studio authorities were reportedly baffled and alarmed by the dailies, unable to comprehend the avant-garde and seemingly nonsensical direction of the project. The film's completion and brief release were a testament to the temporary loosening of state control that characterized the period, a window that would slam shut just two years later.

Budget & Box Office Performance

Analyzing Daisies through a traditional financial lens is futile; its value system is entirely artistic and political.

Budgetary Context: As a product of the state-socialist system, the film's budget was allocated by the government. There was no private investment and no pressure to conform to market demands for profitability. This system, while often creatively stifling, ironically provided the material means for one of the most anti-commercial and experimental films of the decade to be made with professional resources. The very charge of "wasting" food and resources was an attack on its perceived failure to provide a proper return on the state's investment, namely a piece of art that reinforced socialist values.
Marketing & Box Office: The film received virtually no state-sanctioned marketing. Its initial run in Czechoslovak cinemas in 1966 was short-lived before it was officially banned by President Antonín Novotný. It was never intended to be, nor could it ever have been, a commercial hit. Its "box office" was effectively zero.
Ancillary Revenue & Longevity: The true "revenue" of Daisies has been its immense cultural capital, accrued over decades. Its longevity is a product of its suppression. The ban transformed it from a film into a legend. It circulated in secret, was celebrated at international festivals where it could be shown, and was eventually rediscovered by subsequent generations of cinephiles, artists, and scholars. Its revival on home video, particularly through the Criterion Collection, has secured its place in the global art-house canon, ensuring its continued study and influence far beyond what any initial box office run could have achieved.

Awards & Institutional Recognition

While it won few awards upon its release, the institutional recognition of Daisies has grown exponentially over time, cementing its status as a masterpiece.

Initial Awards: Despite its domestic troubles, the film was smuggled out and screened abroad, winning the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics' Association in 1968. This early international recognition was crucial, signaling that Chytilová's work had an appreciative audience outside the confines of the Eastern Bloc.
Canonization: The film's ultimate validation has come through its canonization by cultural institutions. It is a staple of film studies courses on feminism, surrealism, and national cinema movements. It consistently ranks high on lists of the greatest films ever made, including the prestigious decennial Sight & Sound critics' poll. Its inclusion in the Criterion Collection in 2012, complete with scholarly essays and supplementary materials, marked its definitive entry into the pantheon of world cinema. Retrospectives of the Czechoslovak New Wave invariably feature Daisies as a central, if not the central, exhibit of the movement's formal daring.

Archival Tags & Categorization

Daisies defiantly resists easy categorization, existing at the intersection of several genres and movements.

Genres/Subgenres: It is best described as an avant-garde or experimental film for its radical departure from narrative conventions. It is also a surrealist comedy, using absurdist humor and dream logic to explore its philosophical themes. Furthermore, it functions as a potent political satire and allegory, using the Maries' micro-rebellion to critique the macro-level absurdities of authoritarianism and bourgeois society.
Cinematic Movement: It is one of the quintessential works of the Czechoslovak New Wave, a movement that flourished from roughly 1963 to 1969. Alongside filmmakers like Miloš Forman, Jiří Menzel, and Jan Němec, Chytilová helped forge a cinema known for its dark humor, social critique, and formal innovation. However, Daisies arguably stands as the movement's most formally radical and visually explosive entry.
Thematic Tags: Key themes include anarchism, feminism (or proto-feminism, given Chytilová's complicated relationship with the term), nihilism, hedonism, anti-authoritarianism, and a sharp critique of patriarchy and consumerism.
Cultural Moment: The film is an indelible artifact of the cultural and political optimism leading up to the Prague Spring of 1968. It embodies the era's spirit of questioning authority, pushing boundaries, and demanding creative and personal freedom, even as it presciently anticipates the destructive backlash that would follow.

Historical, Political, and Cultural Context

A film as radically disruptive as Daisies could not have been created in a vacuum. It was a cultural firecracker lit during the brief, precarious years of liberalization in 1960s Czechoslovakia, a period of profound social and political tension. The film's anarchic energy is a direct product of its environment, it is at once a celebration of a newfound, intoxicating freedom and a cynical, nihilistic response to the decades of oppressive ideology that preceded it. To fully grasp its provocations, one must understand the specific national, geopolitical, and artistic landscape from which it erupted, a landscape defined by the shadow of Stalinism, the cautious hope of reform, and the looming threat of Soviet dominance.

National Context

Daisies was produced in 1966, a critical moment in Czechoslovak history. The nation was slowly emerging from the rigid, oppressive "cult of personality" surrounding Klement Gottwald and the brutal Stalinist purges of the 1950s. The early 1960s initiated a period of de-Stalinization and cultural "thaw," marked by a loosening of state control over the arts and a growing public appetite for political reform. This atmosphere of cautious optimism and intellectual ferment would culminate in the Prague Spring of 1968, led by the reformist Alexander Dubček.

While Daisies predates the Prague Spring's peak, it is an essential document of the spirit that made it possible. The film's rejection of all rules and its gleeful embrace of chaos can be read as a direct allegory for the younger generation's desire to break free from the suffocating, dogmatic control of the ruling Communist Party under the hardliner Antonín Novotný. The Maries' declaration that the world is "spoiled" resonates deeply with a society grappling with the moral and political bankruptcy of the previous regime. Their subsequent rampage is not just personal hedonism; it's a symbolic tearing down of the old guard's decrepit social and political structures.

Global/Geopolitical Backdrop

Czechoslovakia in 1966 was firmly situated behind the Iron Curtain, a satellite state within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. The Cold War provided a constant, oppressive geopolitical backdrop. This context is crucial for understanding the insular nature of Daisies. It is not a film concerned with international dialogue or co-production; it is a fiercely domestic work, a product of a specific national consciousness. Its critiques are aimed inward, at its own society's hypocrisies and failings. The isolation imposed by the Cold War meant that cultural movements like the Czechoslovak New Wave developed a unique and potent local character. The film's lack of interest in the outside world is itself a political statement, focusing its energies on the internal "rottenness" that needs to be purged. The eventual Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, which brutally crushed the Prague Spring, retroactively casts a dark shadow over the film's joyful destruction, making its temporary liberation feel all the more precious and doomed.

Cultural & Artistic Context

The primary artistic target of Daisies is the official aesthetic doctrine of the state: Socialist Realism. For decades, artists in the Eastern Bloc were mandated to produce work that was optimistic, didactic, and celebratory of socialist ideology. Art was meant to be a tool for educating the masses, depicting heroic workers, wise party leaders, and the inevitable triumph of communism. Daisies is the absolute antithesis of this doctrine.

Instead of optimistic heroes, it features two lazy, amoral, and destructive anti-heroines.
Instead of a clear, educational message, it offers ambiguity, chaos, and philosophical paradox.
Instead of realism, it embraces surrealism, absurdism, and avant-garde formalism.

The film's very form, its fractured editing, nonsensical sequences, and vibrant, anti-naturalistic colors, is a rebellion against the staid, conventional aesthetics of Socialist Realism. Chytilová and her collaborators were drawing from a deeper, often suppressed, well of Czech artistic tradition, particularly the Czech Surrealism of the 1930s. The film also exists in dialogue with the burgeoning "Theatre of the Absurd," exemplified by contemporaries like playwright Václav Havel, whose works similarly used illogical scenarios to critique the inherent absurdity of life under a totalitarian regime. Within the Czechoslovak New Wave itself, Daisies stands out for its extreme formalism. While films by Miloš Forman (Loves of a Blonde) and Jiří Menzel (Closely Watched Trains) also critiqued the system, they did so largely within a framework of social realism. Daisies was a far more radical gesture, arguing that the content of rebellion was inseparable from a rebellion in form.

Censorship & Institutional Constraints

The Czechoslovak film industry was nationalized, with production centered at the state-owned Barrandov Studios. Every film project had to navigate a complex and often unpredictable censorship apparatus. Scripts required approval from various committees, and the final film had to be screened for state authorities before release. The fact that Daisies was made at all is a testament to the temporary relaxation of these controls in the mid-1960s. The censors and studio heads were likely perplexed by the film's abstract and non-linear script, perhaps greenlighting it without fully understanding its subversive potential.

However, upon its completion, its threat was immediately recognized. The film was banned shortly after its release, not through a quiet refusal to distribute, but through a public denunciation in the National Assembly. This act of formal censorship confirmed the film's power and cemented Chytilová's reputation as a troublemaker, effectively preventing her from directing again until the 1970s. Daisies thus serves as a perfect case study of the "thaw": a period liberal enough to allow for its creation, but still repressive enough to ensure its suppression.

Publicity & Initial Public Perception

Given its official condemnation, Daisies received no positive state publicity. Its initial reputation spread through word-of-mouth among students, artists, and intellectuals in Prague. For this audience, the film was an electrifying jolt, a thrilling and hilarious confirmation of their own disillusionment with the establishment. It was a film that spoke their language of irony and absurdity. For the general public and party officials, however, the perception was likely one of bewilderment and outrage. The film was seen as decadent, meaningless, and insulting, particularly its infamous final scene of food destruction, which was interpreted literally as a slap in the face to the nation's workers. This polarized reaction, celebrated by the counter-culture, condemned by the state, is typical for a work of radical art challenging the status quo.

Lingering Cultural Ghosts & Legacies

The Maries' nihilistic pact is rooted in a deep historical trauma. A generation of Czechs and Slovaks had lived through the brutal Nazi occupation of World War II, followed immediately by the imposition of a repressive, Soviet-backed Stalinist regime. For the youth of the 1960s, the official "truths" and moral pronouncements of the Communist Party rang hollow, built upon a recent history of violence, betrayal, and mass conformity. The film's central premise, "the world's gone bad," is not the flippant remark of two spoiled girls; it is the philosophical conclusion of a generation that has inherited a spoiled world. Their destructive spree is an attempt to create a new, albeit chaotic, meaning in a society whose values have been delegitimized. They are the monstrous children of a monstrous history, and their rampage is a hysterical, desperate, and ultimately tragic attempt to exorcise those cultural ghosts.

Director Profile and Authorial Context

At the heart of Daisies' explosive energy is the singular, uncompromising vision of its director, Věra Chytilová. Often called the "First Lady of the Czechoslovak New Wave," a title that both acknowledges her prominence and highlights her isolation as the movement's sole female director, Chytilová was its most formally radical and ideologically untamable force. Her work is a relentless inquiry into morality, social convention, and the politics of gender, all filtered through a fiercely experimental and often confrontational aesthetic. Daisies is not just a film by Chytilová; it is the purest distillation of her authorial identity, a perfect fusion of philosophical rigor, feminist rage, and avant-garde playfulness.

Biographical Sketch

Born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia, in 1929, Věra Chytilová's path to filmmaking was unconventional. She initially studied philosophy and architecture before working as a draftswoman, a photo model, and finally a clapper girl at Prague's Barrandov Studios. This diverse background informed her interdisciplinary and intellectually rigorous approach to cinema. Her breakthrough came when she was accepted into the prestigious Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), where she studied under the influential director Otakar Vávra. As a student during the cultural thaw of the early 1960s, she became a central figure in the burgeoning Czechoslovak New Wave, a movement defined by its departure from the rigid doctrines of Socialist Realism. Chytilová stood out immediately for her formal daring and her focus on the complex, often contradictory, inner lives of her female protagonists.

Career Context: The "Difficult" Auteur

Daisies was Chytilová's second feature film, following the formally inventive Something Different (1963). While her debut already signaled an interest in feminist themes and narrative experimentation, Daisies was a quantum leap in terms of audacity. It was the film that defined her public and critical persona, cementing her reputation as a provocateur and a "difficult" director who refused to compromise. The subsequent government ban on the film, and the official condemnation that came with it, effectively halted her career for nearly seven years. When she was finally allowed to work again in the 1970s, she continued to produce challenging, allegorical films like The Apple Game (1976) and Panelstory (1979), but always under the watchful eye of a newly repressive state apparatus. Daisies remains the high-water mark of her creative freedom and her most iconic act of defiance.

Stylistic Signatures & Thematic Concerns

Chytilová's authorial stamp is unmistakable and is woven into the very fabric of Daisies.

Aggressive Formalism: Chytilová weaponized cinematic form. In Daisies, the chaotic jump cuts, mismatched film stocks, and jarring sound design are not mere decorations but the film's core argument. They deconstruct cinematic reality to mirror the protagonists' deconstruction of social reality. This refusal of "invisible" editing forces the audience to remain critically aware of the film as a constructed object, preventing passive consumption.
Critique of Gender Roles: While Chytilová often bristled at the "feminist" label, her work is a profound and sustained critique of patriarchy. The Maries in Daisies are a direct assault on idealized femininity. They perform the roles of giggling, dependent young women to manipulate and expose the foolishness of the older, lecherous men who court them. Their gluttony, laziness, and destructiveness are a rebellion against a world that expects women to be passive, decorative, and silent.
Philosophical Farce: Grounded in her philosophy background, Chytilová's films function as moral inquiries disguised as absurdist comedies. Daisies begins with a clear philosophical premise: the world is spoiled, so we shall be spoiled too. The entire film is an experiment to see this syllogism through to its illogical conclusion. The film asks profound questions, "What does it mean to be 'bad' in a 'bad' world? Is there a point to moral action in an absurd universe?" without ever providing a simple answer.
Use of Symbol and Allegory: Chytilová's work is rich with symbolic meaning. The constant consumption and destruction of food in Daisies is a multi-layered metaphor for insatiable consumerism, sexual gluttony, and a nihilistic rejection of societal sustenance. The final scene, where the Maries attempt to put the banquet back together, only to be crushed by a chandelier, is a dark, cynical allegory for the impossibility of redeeming a world once it has been broken.

Influences

Chytilová was influenced less by specific filmmakers and more by broader artistic and intellectual movements. Her work shows a clear debt to the European avant-garde of the 1920s, particularly Dadaism and Surrealism, with their embrace of irrationality, collage, and anti-art gestures. Her structural playfulness and Brechtian distancing effects also connect her to the French New Wave, particularly the work of Jean-Luc Godard. Philosophically, her films are in dialogue with existentialism and absurdism, grappling with questions of free will, meaninglessness, and individual responsibility in a corrupt world.

Relationship with the Film Industry

Chytilová's relationship with the Czechoslovak film industry was perpetually contentious. She was a fighter who saw the state-run studio system as both a resource to be exploited and an obstacle to be overcome. She constantly battled censors, producers, and party officials who found her work to be ideologically suspect and formally incomprehensible. The ban on Daisies was the most significant battle of her career, one that defined her as an artist in opposition to the state. Even after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, she remained a critical and fiercely independent voice, often lamenting the commercialism and lack of artistic risk-taking in the new, privatized Czech film industry.

Comparisons & Contrasts

Within the Czechoslovak New Wave: Chytilová's radical formalism stands in sharp contrast to the more accessible, humanist realism of her male contemporaries. While Miloš Forman gently satirized the system through observational comedy and Jiří Menzel crafted lyrical, bittersweet fables, Chytilová took a sledgehammer to both social and cinematic conventions.
International Contemporaries: She is often compared to Jean-Luc Godard for her use of jump cuts, political critique, and deconstruction of the cinematic medium. However, Chytilová's focus is more philosophical and gendered, while Godard's is more explicitly political and theoretical. Her work also shares a surrealist kinship with Luis Buñuel, who similarly used absurdist scenarios to attack the bourgeoisie and religious hypocrisy.
Feminist Cinema: As a pioneer, she can be seen as a forebear to filmmakers like Chantal Akerman or Sally Potter, who would later also use experimental forms to explore female consciousness and critique patriarchal structures.

Auteur Reception

Domestically, Chytilová was both revered by the intelligentsia and reviled by the establishment as a perennial troublemaker. Internationally, her reputation was secured by the festival success of Daisies and other works, and she was quickly recognized as a major auteur of the European art cinema. Over time, and particularly with the rise of feminist film theory in the 1970s and beyond, her work has been re-evaluated and canonized. She is no longer seen as merely a Czech director, but as a crucial figure in the history of avant-garde and feminist filmmaking, a truly unique and uncompromising author whose influence continues to grow.

Influences and Legacy

Daisies did not spring from a void. It is a work deeply rooted in the history of artistic rebellion, drawing its destructive energy from the European avant-garde while simultaneously creating a new cinematic language that would influence rebels for generations to come. The film acts as a crucial nexus point, channeling the anarchic spirit of Dadaism and silent film comedy into a potent, feminist critique that prefigured the aesthetics of punk rock and postmodernism. Its legacy is twofold: it is both a legendary cult object, defined by its own suppression and rediscovery, and a foundational text whose formal and thematic innovations continue to resonate in contemporary art and film.

Formal Influences

Chytilová and her collaborators synthesized a variety of radical artistic traditions to forge the unique aesthetic of Daisies.

Dadaism & Surrealism: The film is arguably the purest expression of the Dadaist spirit in 1960s cinema. Its collage structure, its embrace of nonsense, and its "anti-art" gesture of gleeful destruction are direct descendants of the movement that reacted to the absurdity of World War I. The famous scene where the Maries, with scissors, cut up images of each other and the world around them is a literalization of the Dadaist photomontage technique. From Surrealism, the film borrows its dream logic, its Freudian undertones (seen in the phallic imagery of sausages and bananas), and its commitment to liberating the subconscious from the constraints of rational thought.
Silent Film Comedy: At their core, the two Maries function as a classic slapstick duo, reminiscent of figures like Laurel and Hardy. Their exaggerated, puppet-like physicality, their shared, simplistic goal to consume and destroy, and their episodic, gag-based adventures are all hallmarks of silent comedy. However, Chytilová masterfully subverts this influence. Where silent slapstick is typically charming and innocent, Daisies injects it with a menacing, nihilistic glee. The destruction is not for a simple laugh; it is a philosophical statement, stripping the genre of its whimsy to expose the latent violence and anarchy within.
The French New Wave: While the entire Czechoslovak New Wave was in dialogue with its French counterpart, Chytilová specifically harnessed the deconstructive techniques of filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard. The use of jarring jump cuts to shatter temporal and spatial continuity, the awareness of the medium's artificiality, and the blending of pop culture aesthetics with political critique all echo Godard's work from the period. Yet, Chytilová's application of these techniques is arguably more chaotic and less overtly intellectualized, driven by a visceral, anarchic impulse rather than a purely theoretical one.

Philosophical & Literary Lineages

The film's chaotic surface is built upon a solid foundation of philosophical inquiry.

Absurdism & Existentialism: Daisies is a perfect cinematic illustration of absurdist philosophy. It begins with the recognition that the world is inherently without meaning or value ("The world's gone bad"). The Maries' subsequent actions are a response to this realization. If nothing matters, then all actions are permissible. Their story is an existential experiment in creating one's own values, in this case, "to be bad," in a meaningless universe. The film refuses to judge them, presenting their rampage as a logical, if terrifying, consequence of their initial premise.
Critique of Bourgeois Materialism: The film is a sustained, vicious attack on the emptiness of consumer society. The Maries' primary activity is consumption of food, drink, and entertainment, all of it provided by dull, older bourgeois men who represent the patriarchal establishment. By gorging themselves to the point of absurdity and ultimately laying waste to a grand banquet, the Maries expose consumption not as a fulfilling activity, but as a hollow, destructive, and meaningless cycle.
The Ethics of Autobiography: While not an autobiography in the traditional sense, the film reflects Chytilová's own rebellious spirit and her frustrations with the patriarchal and political structures she was forced to navigate. The Maries act out the unexpressed rage and desire for liberation felt by many women of their generation, making the film a form of collective, allegorical autobiography.

Audience & Industry Legacy

The legacy of Daisies is one of enduring subversion and inspiration.

Cult & Counter-Culture Canonization: Its status as a banned film immediately granted it legendary status. For decades, it was a samizdat work, seen by few but known by many as a masterpiece of rebellion. Its eventual re-release and restoration solidified its place as a cornerstone of counter-culture cinema, celebrated for its "bad attitude" and its refusal to conform.
Influence on Feminist Cinema: Daisies is a foundational text of feminist filmmaking. It demonstrated that a feminist critique could be waged not just through narrative content, but through a radical deconstruction of cinematic form itself. Its influence can be seen in the aesthetics of the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s and in the work of countless female artists and directors who seek to create a cinematic language outside of patriarchal conventions.
Aesthetic Blueprint for the Future: The film’s rapid-fire, collage-based editing and vibrant, pop-art visuals were decades ahead of their time. Its aesthetic DNA is clearly visible in the language of music videos that would emerge in the 1980s, as well as in the work of later avant-garde and experimental filmmakers who embraced visual and narrative fragmentation.

Impact on Personnel

Daisies was a career-defining moment, for better and for worse, for its key creators.

For Věra Chytilová, it was both her masterpiece and her cross to bear. The film's ban sent her into a professional wilderness for years and permanently marked her as a dissident in the eyes of the state, forcing her to fight for every subsequent project.
The film highlighted the immense, often under-credited, talent of co-writer and designer Ester Krumbachová, who was a central creative force for the entire Czechoslovak New Wave.
Cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera's groundbreaking work on the film cemented his legacy as one of the most innovative and daring cameramen of his generation.
The non-professional actresses, Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová, were immortalized. They became the iconic, scissor-wielding faces of the Prague Spring's artistic rebellion.

Comparative Notes

The film's unique position is clarified when compared to other works.

It shares its surrealist critique of bourgeois rituals with Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and its vision of societal collapse through a formalist, avant-garde lens with Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend.
It stands as a progenitor to later punk and anarchist films like Derek Jarman's Jubilee and Alex Cox's Repo Man, which share its spirit of youthful, nihilistic rebellion against a corrupt society.
In contrast, its aggressive, deconstructive approach to feminist filmmaking stands apart from the more controlled, observational "female gaze" of later works like Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, highlighting the diversity of strategies within feminist cinema.

Academic & Critical Legacy

In academia, Daisies is a rich and inexhaustible subject of analysis.

Feminist Film Theory: It is a central case study, analyzed for its complex representation of female agency, its parody of feminine stereotypes, and its radical attempt to create a non-patriarchal cinematic language. It both challenges and enriches foundational theories about scopophilia (the pleasure of looking) and the male gaze.
Psychoanalytic & Political Readings: Critics often interpret the film through a psychoanalytic lens, viewing the Maries as pure manifestations of the id, running amok without the check of a social superego. Politically, it is endlessly read as a sophisticated allegory for the madness of life under an authoritarian regime, where acting "badly" is the only sane response. Its final, insincere dedication to "those who get upset only over a trod-upon salad" is a masterstroke of irony, directly mocking its future censors.

Audience and Critical Reception

The reception of Daisies was as chaotic and polarized as the film itself. From the moment of its brief premiere, it was not merely watched but viscerally reacted to, functioning as a cultural litmus test that immediately sorted its viewers into camps of outrage or adoration. Condemned by the state as a decadent piece of filth and celebrated by the international avant-garde as a work of revolutionary genius, the film's journey through public and critical opinion is a story of suppression, rediscovery, and eventual canonization. Its reception history is inseparable from its meaning, proving that the most potent art is often that which is initially deemed indigestible.

Contemporary Critics (c. 1966-1968)

The initial critical response was a tale of two worlds: the official, ideological condemnation within Czechoslovakia and the enthusiastic, if sometimes bewildered, embrace by critics abroad.

Official Soviet Bloc Critiques: The state's response was not an aesthetic critique but a political denunciation. In the Czechoslovak National Assembly, officials famously attacked the film on moral and economic grounds, with Member of Parliament Jaroslav Pružinec’s complaint about the on-screen wastage of food becoming a symbol of the regime’s willful literal-mindedness. The film was officially branded as nihilistic, meaningless, and symptomatic of a disaffected youth utterly disconnected from socialist principles. Critics operating within the state-sanctioned press were obligated to toe this party line, dismissing the film as a formalist prank devoid of social value.
Early International Critics: In stark contrast, when Daisies was smuggled into Western European film festivals, it was hailed as a major discovery. Critics recognized it as a key work of the Czechoslovak New Wave and praised its audacious visual language, its liberating energy, and its punk-rock spirit. While many admitted to being overwhelmed by its formal anarchy on a first viewing, they saw its difficulty as a sign of its artistic ambition. They correctly identified its satirical attack on bourgeois and authoritarian hypocrisy, celebrating Chytilová as a bold and uncompromising new voice in world cinema.

Contemporary Audience

Just as with the critics, the film violently split its initial audiences.

Domestic Audience: In its very short run in Czechoslovak theaters, Daisies provoked walkouts and confusion among the general public, who were unaccustomed to such a radical break from narrative and visual convention. However, for a younger, more artistically and politically adventurous audience of students, artists, and intellectuals in Prague, the film was a revelation. It was a thrilling, hilarious, and cathartic expression of their own frustrations with the rigid and hypocritical society they inhabited. It became an instant underground classic for the burgeoning counter-culture.
International Audience: The film's initial audience in the West was, by nature, self-selecting and exclusive. It was confined to the art-house and festival circuit, where viewers were already primed for challenging, non-commercial cinema. This audience was equipped with the critical tools to appreciate its avant-garde techniques and was politically sympathetic to its anti-authoritarian message, viewing it through the lens of Cold War dissidence.

Evolving Reception

The journey of Daisies from a banned, obscure artifact to a canonical masterpiece was a slow process driven by key cultural forces.

Mechanisms of Canonization: The film's legend grew throughout its years of suppression. Its reputation was kept alive through festival screenings and repertory cinema programs dedicated to the Czechoslovak New Wave. The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 was a pivotal moment, allowing for its official restoration and re-release. However, the two most significant factors in its canonization were its adoption into academic curricula, becoming a foundational text in feminist film theory and studies of the European avant-garde, and its release on high-quality home video formats, particularly the 2012 Criterion Collection Blu-ray. This made the film accessible to a global audience and provided the scholarly context necessary to unpack its dense formal and thematic layers.
From Obscurity to Profundity: With increased access and critical analysis, the perception of the film has fundamentally shifted. What was once dismissed by its detractors as a meaningless, chaotic prank is now widely understood as a profoundly structured and philosophically coherent work of art. The understanding grew that its chaos is its meaning, and its formal difficulty is essential to its political project. The importance of repeat viewings became clear, as the film's internal logic and visual motifs reveal themselves more fully over time.

Geographic Differences

Western Appreciation: The West was able to appreciate Daisies more immediately, in part because of a pre-existing context for avant-garde art and counter-cultural politics. It fit into a narrative of Cold War artistic dissidence, a brave cry for freedom from behind the Iron Curtain. This reading, while valid, sometimes overlooked the film's more specific critiques of Czech society.
Post-Soviet Reclamation: After 1989, the film was fully reclaimed in its homeland. For Czech and Slovak audiences, it is not just an anti-communist allegory but a complex cultural document, a vital and beloved piece of their national heritage. It represents the pinnacle of creative freedom achieved during the Prague Spring, a moment of cultural efflorescence that was brutally extinguished. This local context allows for a richer and more nuanced interpretation than is sometimes available to outside viewers.

Awards vs. Legacy

Daisies is a prime example of a film whose cultural importance is in inverse proportion to its collection of major awards. It was never nominated for an Oscar; it did not win the Palme d'Or. Its most significant contemporary "award" was its ban, the highest possible certification of its political potency and artistic threat. Its true legacy was not built in acceptance speeches but in classrooms, in critical essays, in the revival-house screenings that blew the minds of new generations, and in the DNA of the countless punk, feminist, and avant-garde films it inspired. The film stands as definitive proof that the judgment of history, not the decision of an awards jury, is the ultimate arbiter of a masterpiece.

Formal and Thematic Analysis

In Daisies, form is not merely a container for content; form is the content. Věra Chytilová’s central argument that a spoiled, absurd world warrants an equally spoiled and absurd response, is articulated not just through the actions of its protagonists, but through the very celluloid of the film itself. Every jump cut, every jarring sound effect, every inexplicable shift in color is a tactical maneuver in the film's grand strategy of aesthetic warfare. To analyze the film's formal elements is to dissect its philosophical core, revealing a meticulously constructed chaos where visual language and thematic intent are fused into a single, explosive statement.

Narrative Form

The film willfully abandons conventional narrative structure in favor of a non-linear, episodic, and associative form. There is no traditional three-act plot, character development, or causal logic. The narrative is a string of anarchic set pieces, or "happenings," linked by the Maries' singular, unchanging goal: to be "bad."

Structure: The film's structure is cyclical. It begins with the Maries as lifeless puppets deciding on their new ethos and ends with their failed attempt at redemption, leading to their destruction. This circularity suggests a philosophical trap: their rebellion, born of a meaningless world, ultimately leads them back to a meaningless end.
Transitions: Transitions are not based on plot progression but on free association. A shot of the Maries looking at a tree might cut to them in their apartment decorated with fruit, which then cuts to them eating that fruit at a restaurant. This creates a poetic, dream-like flow that prioritizes sensation and ideas over linear storytelling.

Genre

Daisies engages with and completely subverts several genres. It is a comedy whose gags are often more disturbing than funny, a satire that offers no constructive critique or moral alternative, and a buddy film where the central relationship is based on a shared nihilistic pact rather than affection. Chytilová uses the shell of these familiar genres to lure the viewer in before shattering any expectation of comfort or resolution. The film is best understood as a philosophical farce or an avant-garde happening, a genre of its own creation where the primary goal is provocation and sensory assault.

Visuals

The film's visual strategy, conceived by Chytilová and cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, is its most famous and radical element. It is a relentless attack on visual continuity and realism.

Composition & Framing: Shots are often playfully composed, with the Maries treated as decorative objects in a frame, echoing their status as sexual objects for the men they dupe. Yet, they constantly disrupt this composition, sprawling across furniture and interacting with the world as if it were their personal playground.
Color Strategy: The film is a riot of color, used for purely expressive and disruptive purposes. Scenes switch arbitrarily between stark black-and-white, nostalgic sepia, and lush color. Often, garish monochromatic filters (yellow, green, pink) are applied to entire scenes, rendering them abstract and dream-like. This is not color-correction; it is color-weaponization, destroying any sense of reality and emphasizing the film's artificiality.
Cinematic Effects: Kučera employed a dazzling array of in-camera and optical effects: solarization, kaleidoscopic prisms, and mismatched film stocks create a fragmented, disoriented visual texture.
Visual Motifs: The film is dense with recurring symbols. Scissors represent deconstruction and violence; apples and eggs symbolize knowledge, temptation, and fertility, which the Maries thoughtlessly consume or destroy; flowers (daisies) represent a fragile, conventional femininity that the girls both embody and mock.

Sound & Music

The soundscape of Daisies is as fractured and anti-realist as its visuals.

Score: The music by Jiří Šust and Jiří Šlitr is a crucial element, veering from whimsical, circus-like themes that accompany the Maries' pranks to jarring, dissonant military marches and avant-garde noise that underscore the film's inherent violence.
Sound Design: Diegetic sound is exaggerated to a cartoonish effect. The "boing" of the Maries' puppet-like movements, the loud crunch of them eating, and the amplified squeaks and crashes create a surreal, slapstick atmosphere that is simultaneously comical and unsettling.
Use of Voice: The Maries' dialogue is often delivered in a flat, robotic monotone, emphasizing their symbolic, non-human nature. Their voices are just another texture in the chaotic sound mix.

Editing

Editor Miroslav Hájek’s work is fundamental to the film’s anarchic project. The editing rejects continuity in favor of collision.

Rejection of Montage: Chytilová explicitly rejects the Soviet montage theory of creating meaning through juxtaposition. Instead, her editing creates anti-meaning or chaos. Jump cuts are used constantly, fragmenting a single action into a series of jerky movements. A character might exit a frame and appear in a completely different location in the next shot, shattering any sense of coherent space or time.
Collage: The film is edited like a Dadaist collage. In the most famous sequence, images of the Maries are rapidly intercut with images of war and destruction, making an explicit visual link between their personal, nihilistic rampage and the broader, state-sanctioned violence of the world.

Performance

The performances of the non-professional actresses, Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová, are key to the film's distancing effect.

Anti-Psychological Acting: The Maries are not realistic characters with complex inner lives. They are ciphers, ideas in motion. Their performances are deliberately stylized, flat, and puppet-like. This prevents audience identification and forces the viewer to engage with them as symbols of a philosophical concept.
The Gaze: The women perform a version of femininity for the men they fool, but they often seem bored by their own performance. Their gazes are often vacant or directed almost at the audience, implicating the viewer in the spectacle and highlighting the performative nature of all social roles.

Space & Setting

The film's settings are not mere backdrops but ideological arenas. The Maries move through a series of sterile, bourgeois spaces, fancy restaurants, nightclubs, the apartments of their sugar daddies, which they systematically disrupt and contaminate. The ultimate setting is the grand banquet hall, a pristine symbol of hierarchical order, wealth, and patriarchal power, which they utterly desecrate in the film's climactic scene of destruction.

Tone & Emotion

The tone of Daisies is a complex and volatile mixture of manic glee and profound nihilism. The film's bright colors, rapid pace, and comedic gags create a surface of joyful, liberating anarchy. Yet, beneath this is a deep sense of despair. The Maries' laughter often seems hollow, and their destruction, while momentarily satisfying, leads nowhere. The film’s final moments, their pathetic attempt to “fix” the mess, their subsequent death, and the final dedication mocking the easily offended, are deeply cynical, leaving the viewer with a sense of unease rather than catharsis.

Philosophy, Ethics, & Politics

All of these formal elements combine to serve a complex philosophical argument.

Politics of Form: The film’s primary political act is its refusal to communicate clearly or didactically. By shattering cinematic conventions, it resists becoming a piece of propaganda for any ideology, forcing the viewer into a state of active, critical interpretation.
Critique of Patriarchy and Materialism: The film's formal chaos is a direct reflection of its critique. The interchangeable, foolish men and the endless, meaningless consumption are rendered absurd through the film's surreal and fragmented style.
The Ethics of Destruction: Daisies does not unconditionally celebrate the Maries' rampage. The bleak ending suggests that nihilistic destruction is not a viable path to liberation but a self-annihilating dead end. The film poses a question: If the world is spoiled, what is the correct response? It powerfully demonstrates what an incorrect, albeit logical, response looks like, leaving the viewer to contemplate a better alternative.

Deep Scene Deconstruction

While Daisies operates as a holistic aesthetic assault, its philosophical power is crystallized in several key sequences where its formal radicalism and thematic concerns achieve perfect synthesis. A granular analysis of these scenes reveals the intricate mechanics of Chytilová’s anarchic vision, demonstrating how every cut, color shift, and sound cue is a deliberately aimed shot at social and cinematic convention. We will deconstruct three pivotal scenes: the opening "pact" of the puppets, the central scissors-and-collage sequence, and the climactic destruction of the banquet. These moments function as manifestos for the film's core arguments about morality, gender, and the very nature of reality.

Scene 1: The Pact of the Puppets

Context: This is the film's opening scene, immediately following a montage of war footage. It establishes the protagonists and the film's core philosophical premise before they enter the "real" world.
Narrative Function: The scene serves as a prologue and a statement of intent. It introduces the Maries not as realistic characters, but as symbolic constructs or archetypes. Their decision to be "bad" because the world is "bad" provides the engine for the entire film that follows.
Mise-en-scène: The two Maries are dressed in bikinis, sitting stiffly in front of a backdrop that looks like a patterned field of daisies. Their limbs are splayed at unnatural angles. The only key prop is an apple on a string, which one Marie mindlessly bats at. The setting is deliberately abstract and artificial, resembling a stage or a void rather than a real place.
Cinematography: The scene is shot in a heavily stylized sepia tone, evoking an old, mechanical world. The camera is static, framing the women in a flat, two-dimensional composition. This lack of depth reinforces the sense that they are figures on a screen or puppets in a box, not people in a space.
Editing: The editing is deliberately jerky. A simple head turn is accomplished through a jump cut, making the movement seem unnatural and mechanical. This cutting style is the first introduction to the film's rejection of fluid, realist motion.
Sound Design: The dominant sound is a loud, dissonant "boing" and the grinding of gears that syncs with their movements. This non-diegetic sound explicitly characterizes them as wind-up toys or marionettes being controlled by an unseen force. Their dialogue is delivered in a robotic, affectless monotone.
Performance: Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová's performances are entirely physical and anti-psychological. They do not "act"; they simply move their limbs as if pulled by strings. There is no emotion in their decision to be spoiled, only a flat, logical conclusion.
Thematic Resonance: This scene is a dense allegory. The Maries as puppets suggest a lack of agency, products of a mechanized, violent world (as shown in the preceding war montage). Their decision to be "bad" is thus framed as the only choice available to them, a programming choice. The apple is a clear symbol of the Tree of Knowledge, but here, the fall from grace is a conscious, logical decision, not a sin of passion.
Overall Effect: The scene immediately alienates the viewer from any expectation of realism. It is deeply unsettling, funny, and intellectually stimulating. It forces the audience to engage with the characters as concepts from the very beginning, setting the stage for the philosophical farce that is to come.

Scene 2: The Scissors Collage

Context: Occurring midway through the film, after a series of pranks, the Maries are in their apartment, seemingly bored. This sequence serves as a transition and a moment of pure, abstract deconstruction.
Narrative Function: This scene has almost no narrative function in a traditional sense. Instead, it is a visual thesis statement for the film's method: deconstruction through cutting. It visualizes the film's own editing process and the Maries' anarchic worldview.
Mise-en-scène: The setting is their cluttered apartment. The key props are a pair of large scissors and various foods, including pickles, eggs, and sausages. The Maries, in simple shifts, are sprawled on the bed.
Cinematography: The sequence is a riot of color and optical effects. The camera is often static, allowing the chaos to unfold within the frame. Chytilová uses colored filters and split-screen effects to further fracture the image.
Editing: This is one of the most aggressively edited sequences in cinema history. It is a rapid-fire collage of the Maries using the scissors to cut up phallic sausages and pickles, and then, in a surreal leap, to cut up their own bodies, a leg is snipped off, a head is severed, and they lie in dismembered pieces on the bed. These images are intercut with shots of them laughing. The cuts are not meant to be seamless; they are meant to be seen as cuts, as violent acts of separation.
Sound Design: The primary sound is the loud, rhythmic "snip-snip" of the scissors, amplified to an aggressive degree. This is paired with their disconnected giggling, creating a chilling juxtaposition of childish glee and implied violence.
Performance: The actresses perform with a sense of playful, detached curiosity. They handle the scissors like a newly discovered toy, and their self-dismemberment is treated as a fun game rather than an act of body horror.
Thematic Resonance: The scene is a multi-layered metaphor. On a feminist level, they are literally deconstructing patriarchal symbols (phallic food) and the female form itself, refusing to be seen as whole, consumable objects. On a cinematic level, the scissors represent the editor's tool, showing how reality (the film) is constructed from fragmented pieces. It is a deeply Dadaist moment, an act of destroying to create.
Overall Effect: The sequence is exhilarating, shocking, and deeply funny. It’s a perfect distillation of the film's "creative destruction." The viewer is forced to confront the violence inherent in looking and in the act of filmmaking itself, all while being swept up in the scene's infectious, anarchic energy.

Scene 3: The Banquet of Destruction

Context: This is the film's climax. After being kicked out of a nightclub, the Maries discover a massive, fully prepared banquet in a grand hall, seemingly waiting for important dignitaries.
Narrative Function: This scene is the logical endpoint of the Maries' entire philosophical project. It is the ultimate test of their commitment to being "spoiled" and the grandest act of destruction in their rampage.
Mise-en-scène: The setting is opulent and pristine. A massive U-shaped table is laden with elaborate cakes, roasted birds, fruits, and fine china, all perfectly arranged. It is a symbol of immense wealth, order, and bourgeois formality. The Maries, in simple print dresses, are the only element of chaos in this perfect system.
Cinematography: The camera initially observes the scene in lush, stable color shots, emphasizing the beauty and order of the banquet. As the destruction begins, the camerawork becomes more chaotic, using handheld shots and quick pans to capture the frenzy.
Editing: The editing starts conventionally but accelerates as the chaos mounts. Rapid cuts show a cake being smashed, a glass being thrown, and the Maries swinging from a chandelier, creating a whirlwind of destructive imagery.
Sound Design: The scene begins in near silence, emphasizing the illicit nature of their entry. It then erupts into a symphony of destruction: smashing glass, squishing food, and the Maries' manic laughter and food-fight shouts. This is all set to an upbeat, carnivalesque musical score that frames the chaos as a joyful celebration.
Performance: The Maries regress to a state of infantile glee. They gorge themselves, stomp on cakes, have food fights, and strip off their clothes. Their performance is pure id, a complete release from all social inhibitions.
Thematic Resonance: This is the film's central set piece and its most potent allegory. The banquet represents the entire corrupt, patriarchal, bourgeois system. The Maries' desecration of it is a revolutionary act, a complete rejection of societal norms and a leveling of hierarchical structures. They are literally consuming and destroying the spoils of a system that has excluded them. However, their subsequent, failed attempt to "fix" it and their death by chandelier suggests the ultimate futility and self-destructive nature of pure nihilism.
Overall Effect: The scene is one of the most iconic moments of 1960s cinema. It is a breathtaking spectacle of liberation and a deeply troubling vision of what happens when all rules are abolished. It is simultaneously joyous and horrifying, leaving the audience to grapple with the complex ethics of the Maries' revolution.

Synthesis and Reflective Notes

Having deconstructed Daisies through its context, creator, form, and reception, this final section seeks to synthesize these threads into a cohesive whole. Chytilová's film is more than the sum of its anarchic parts; it is a meticulously engineered philosophical statement where chaos is the method, not the madness. By examining the relationships between its strategies and themes, cross-linking the various facets of its existence, and reflecting on its unresolved tensions, we can arrive at a fuller appreciation of its enduring and explosive power. Daisies is not a film to be passively understood but an aesthetic event to be wrestled with, and its most profound truths lie within its paradoxes.

Synthesis: The Controlled Chaos

The central dialectic of Daisies is the tension between destruction and creation. The Maries destroy food, social norms, and patriarchal expectations, but in doing so, they create a new, albeit temporary, reality for themselves governed by their own rules. This is mirrored perfectly in the film's form. Chytilová and her collaborators employ destructive cinematic techniques, shattering continuity, breaking narrative logic, using jarring sounds, to create a wholly new and exhilarating aesthetic language.

This reveals the film's greatest paradox: its appearance of total, spontaneous anarchy is the product of immense artistic control. Every chaotic jump cut, every "random" color filter is a precise, deliberate choice. This meticulous construction of chaos serves to expose the fabricated nature of all systems, both cinematic and social. If the "reality" of a film can be so easily deconstructed, the film argues, then so too can the "reality" of social etiquette, gender roles, and political authority.

Crosslinks: Weaving the Threads

The insights from the preceding sections are deeply interconnected, each illuminating the others.

Context & Form: The oppressive demand for Socialist Realism in Czechoslovak art, with its rigid, optimistic, and didactic narrative formulas, is the direct catalyst for the film's aggressive anti-realist formalism. The film's every formal choice is a rebellion against the aesthetic doctrines of the state. Its ambiguity is a political response to propaganda's false certainty.
Auteur & Reception: Věra Chytilová’s established reputation as a "difficult" and uncompromising auteur undoubtedly primed the authorities for a negative reception. The official denunciation was not just a reaction to the film in isolation but to its creator, a fiercely independent woman in a male-dominated, state-controlled industry who refused to be silenced.
Critical Lenses & The Film's Nature: The film's profound ambiguity and symbolic density are precisely why it has become such a fertile ground for various critical lenses. Its assault on patriarchal symbols makes it a canonical text for feminist theory; its focus on unrestrained desire makes it perfect for psychoanalytic readings; its nonsensical surface and grim conclusion make it a classic of absurdist philosophy. The film does not offer one single meaning, making it a perfect mirror for a multitude of interpretations.

Personal Resonance

For any first-time viewer, the initial experience of Daisies is often one of sensory overload and bewilderment. The relentless pace and the flagrant disregard for narrative convention can feel alienating. Yet, herein lies its genius. The journey from confusion to appreciation is a journey from trying to find a "story" to recognizing that the film's visual and sonic texture is the story. One begins to see the patterns in the chaos, to understand the logic of the associative edits, and to appreciate the profound philosophical questions humming beneath the candy-colored surface.

Compared to other films of rebellion, Daisies feels unique. Where a film like Easy Rider finds liberation in the open road and a tragic clash with society, Daisies finds its rebellion entirely in the realm of aesthetics and absurdist performance. It illuminates Chytilová's entire oeuvre, establishing the core theme that would define her career: a deep moral seriousness disguised as a playful, chaotic, and formally radical prank.

Unresolved Tensions

Daisies leaves its audience with a series of profound and deliberately unresolved questions.

Sincere or Satirical Morality?: The final sequence, where the Maries unconvincingly decide "we'll be good" and try to clean up their mess before being crushed, is the film's ultimate ambiguity. Is this a sincere, if cynical, moral lesson that nihilism leads to death? Or is it a final, mocking gesture for the benefit of the censors, a tacked-on "moral" so patently absurd that it exposes the foolishness of demanding one? The film brilliantly refuses to answer.
The Ethics of Anarchy: The film never fully endorses its heroines' actions. It revels in the joy of their liberation but also shows its limitations, its emptiness, and its self-destructive endpoint. It forces the viewer to ask: If you are going to tear down a corrupt system, what, if anything, are you prepared to build in its place?
The Power of Ambiguity: Ultimately, the film's resistance to a single, clear message is its greatest strength. It is not propaganda. It is a philosophical problem posed in the language of cinema. By refusing to provide easy answers, Daisies empowers its audience to grapple with the difficult questions themselves, making it a perpetually active and unsettling work of art.

Concluding Thoughts & Pathways for the Future

Final Statement: Daisies is a timeless and essential act of cinematic insurgency. It is a masterclass in how to weaponize aesthetics, a profound feminist statement, and a hilarious, terrifying, and deeply intelligent exploration of what it means to be "bad" in a world that has already gone spoiled.
Enduring Relevance (September 2025): Nearly sixty years after its creation, the film feels more relevant than ever. In an age defined by the curated performances of social media, the Maries’ gleeful deconstruction of feminine roles is a potent antidote. Their critique of mindless consumption resonates powerfully in a world of hyper-capitalism and fast fashion. Most importantly, their central dilemma, how to respond to a world that feels morally and politically bankrupt, is a question that continues to haunt the contemporary consciousness. Their method of joyful, aesthetic rebellion remains an inspiration for artists and activists alike.
Future Research: While the film is well-studied, further research could focus on a more detailed analysis of the specific contributions of co-writer and designer Ester Krumbachová, whose aesthetic vision was so central to the film. Another fruitful path would be a comparative media analysis, tracing the direct line of influence from Daisies' editing and visual language to the aesthetics of early MTV music videos and the 1990s Riot Grrrl subculture.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Věra Chytilová's Daisies is not a film one simply watches; it is an event one survives and a puzzle one continues to solve long after the credits roll. It is a meticulously crafted philosophical prank, a political Molotov cocktail disguised as a surrealist comedy. Its formal deconstruction is not a stylistic choice but a moral imperative, a direct aesthetic echo of the Maries' own rampage against a world they have deemed spoiled. By shattering the language of cinema, Chytilová and her collaborators forged a new one capable of expressing the radical, chaotic, and liberating joy of rebellion. Decades after its creation, it remains cinema's most exhilarating and terrifying invitation to misbehave, a vibrant and enduring testament to the revolutionary power of being "bad." It is an essential experience, forever fresh, forever defiant, and forever spoiled.

After the Credits

Two women laugh their way into ruin, refusing to play by the rules

Framing the Conversation

When we talk about the Czechoslovak New Wave, we often talk about political allegory, surreal imagery, and the state’s uneasy tolerance of artistic dissent. But Daisies is less a parable than a provocation. Věra Chytilová unleashes two Maries who treat the world as material to cut, consume, and discard. They slice up film stock, gorge on feasts, toy with men, and dismantle every gesture of seriousness with laughter. The film doesn’t explain or justify their chaos. It lets it spill over until it is punished, leaving us to decide whether the punishment is deserved or simply another absurdity. What lingers is not a message but a mood: unruly, gleeful, and uncontainable.

What Stayed With Me

The scissors snipping through sausages, images, and even the film itself
The banquet sequence, equal parts comedy, excess, and desecration
The shifting palette of colors and filters, each turn like a new mask of rebellion
The way laughter becomes both a weapon and a contagion

What Stayed With You?

Did the Maries’ destruction feel like liberation, cruelty, or both?
Which moments unsettled you most: the playful or the violent?
How did the abrupt visual style affect your trust in the film’s “reality”?
Did you see their final collapse as justice, irony, or another prank?

Themes We Might Circle

Anarchy as critique of authority, gender, and conformity
The female trickster as a disruptive figure in cinema
Montage as a tool of rebellion rather than continuity
Waste, punishment, and the politics of abundance and scarcity
Laughter as resistance and contagion

Try Naming a Moment Where…

Editing made you feel the film itself was laughing at you
A meal turned into something grotesque or sacred
The use of color transformed the meaning of a scene
Chaos revealed something truer than order ever could

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