Experimental film – Film movements - Daises

• Post-war experimentation

  Period dominated by feelings of dissatisfaction and disillusion, anger towards the older generation who caused two world wars
• Italian New Realist post WW2 movement

  • Cinematic experience doesn't have to be about the upper classes, doesn't need a star system or to be shot in a studio, everyday lives of working-class people are just as cinematic and interesting as formulaic Hollywood-like melodramas or social realist state-sponsored films
• 1960s' European Avant-Garde movements, known as the cinematic new waves of Europe

  • Anti-establishment answer to the tired, derivative cinema still in production during the 40s and 50s, boundless experimentation that transformed cinema worldwide
• Czech New Wave film movement

  Move away from the social realist films prescribed by the communist regime, reflects the Czech cultural tradition for expressing opposition through surreal fantasy, cinema of rebellion and a desire for freedom enabled by a brief relaxation of censorship under communist rule
• Daisies (Chytilova, 1965)

  • Feminism: Ridicules the guardians of patriarchy, critiques the objectification of the protagonists, presents an early insight on issues of fragmentation of the female body
  • Vera Chytilova's auteur style focuses on anti-patriarchal themes and visual symbolisms, use of a psychedelic colour palette
  • Very loosely plotted and fractured narrative with many ellipses and ambiguous dialogue, reflective of the film's surrealist nature
  • Playful and comic, Marie 1 and 2 represent youth wanting a change with the old patriarchal order
  • Banned on release because of its 'wasteful' use of food at a time of food shortages, rather than for its critique of the regime
• A film movement is constituted by a distinctive body of films, each directed by an auteur, often further constituted by a related body of critical or theoretical writing, significant in film history because of thematic and formal/stylistic innovations which characterise the films and which are a response to wider political, social or cultural changes at a particular time and in a particular place
• Film movements

  New and original style of filmmaking, films within a movement form a body of films which may have a set of shared characteristics, emerge at a particular moment in time, often develop within a particular country or region but might not be reflective of an overall national cinema, sometimes develop as a reaction against the typical style of national films
• Chytilova: 'We decided to allow ourselves to be bound by nothing. Absolutely nothing.'
• Film movements have a high status in film studies, contribute to the artistic and academic status of film, have the status of art and directors the status of artists/auteurs
• Daisies

  1966, Vera Chytilova, Czechoslovakia
• Component 2: Global Filmmaking Perspectives (AL)
• Core Study Areas

  • Key Elements of Film Form
  • Meaning & Response
  • The Contexts of Film
• Specialist Study Area

  • Auteur (AL)
  • Narrative (AL)
• Vera Chytilova has spoken extensively about the film and the focus on comedy and philosophy, calling it a 'philosophical farce'
• Her style as an auteur can be linked directly to the Czech New Wave, feminism and the brutality of the contemporary communist regime
• Daisies is an important feminist film and a study in the teenage experience of existentialism that will be familiar to many students
• Useful Sequences and timings/links

  • The opening four minutes
  • The fire in the apartment
• Cinematography

  • Static camera and extended longshots give an artificial feel and creates a distance between the viewer and the two Maries; this focuses attention away from any emotional connection with the characters and forces us to consider the situation in terms of ideology, they are experimenting with identity and meaning and the lack of it in an existentialist way
• Mise-en-Scène

  • Bikinis draw attention to voyeuristic, sexualized nature of that way that young women are viewed in this society, but this is at odds with the robotic/puppet style of their performances and the way they experiment with and control their own identities: Marie 2 decides to adopt the persona of a virgin and does this by placing the crown of daisies on her head
• Editing

  • Use of black and white to depict realism: here the Maries are aimless and invisible as people. Colour/other filters are often used to show youthful vibrancy, where they take charge of their own representations and continuity editing features such as match on action are used in a surrealist way to create distance and engagement on a symbolic level
• Sound

  • Creaking sounds to enhance the puppet like movements: women and people controlled by the communist regime. Music used sparingly, lute music creates nostalgia for more innocent times, the field of daisies and ironically suggests the innocence before Marie 2 eats the apple. But we have been told that it is all a deliberate construction/ fantasy, depicted also by the unrealistic apple tree
• Representations

  • Young women are seen as both desirable and invisible, men as predatory and un-caring, the contemporary society as patriarchal, out-dated and middle-aged. The communist regime as brutal, hypocritical and hierarchical. There is no place for youthfulness in this society and this is at odds with the rest of Europe at this time
• Aesthetics

  • The influence of surrealism in the use of editing, filters, mosaic effects and the juxtaposition of black and white with color. The use of youthful 1960s fashions, hairstyles and make-up clashing with austere, outdated locations
• Social

  • The double standards for young women in this society and the impact, or lack of it, of feminism apparent in the behavior and conformity of the Maries in particular. Fear of Nuclear war
• Political

  • The brutal, violent, patriarchal and oppressive communist regime and control of the film
• Industry

  • The film was hated by the authorities and after the Soviet re-invasion in 1968, Chytilova was banned from working for 6 years
• Auteur and Narrative

  • Using surrealism to subvert communist realism, also as a film-maker in the context of the Czechoslovak New Wave – see book by the same name by Peter Hames. As a subversive and feminist film-maker. Typical themes of time and death linked to philosophies of nihilism and existentialism