SEDMIKRÁSKY / DAISIES

Sedmikrásky (Daisies) is a film made in Czechoslovakia in 1966 and directed by Věra Chytilová.

It was made amidst an era of social change and released two years before the Prague Spring. Around the developed world, there were shifts in power, as groups revolted against their respective leaders; student riots in Paris (1968) followed by a general strike of over 10 million workers brought the country to a standstill and threatened to wholly overthrow the government. Similarly, there were student demonstrations in the UK and US, however as they were confined to single areas, they were smaller scale to those in Paris. 

The culture of revolt and protest was rife at this time, student protests joined with anti-war and peace protests (especially anti-Vietnam throughout the 1960-70s). Governments were made aware of any discord. 

Czechoslovakia was going through cultural reform at this time. "In the summer of 1968, the focus of student radicalism shifted to America, where students expressed their disillusionment with the capitalist democracy and Czechoslovakia, where they sought to embrace it. In August, young people assembled in the streets of Prague to

protest against the crushing of the Velvet Revolution (an attempt to introduce some democracy in this communist country) by the USSR" - ('A Sixties Social Revolution?: British Society 1959 - 1975' - Sally Waller).

Carmen Gray (BFI) on Chytilová; "(she) formed her career when Czechoslovakia was under Soviet rule, and the politically charged climate deeply impacted her work. She was accepted into Prague’s renowned film school FAMU, which brought her together with other directing talents such as Jiří Menzel and Jan Němec. They made films with a spirit of dissent and black humour that satirised life under the communist regime, and collectively became known as the Czech New Wave. This flourishing of creative expression was part of a period of liberalisation that culminated in the 1968 Prague Spring – Alexander Dubček’s attempt to bring “socialism with a human face”. It didn’t last long. Soviet-led tanks rolled in to crush the reforms, bringing a cultural crackdown. A number of Chytilová’s contemporaries left for abroad, but she continued the struggle to work at home. The state-controlled nature of film funding meant falling foul of the authorities left few alternatives to get projects off the ground, and in creative frustration Chytilová at times resorted to working on TV commercials under a pseudonym.

In 1966, Chytilová made her second feature Daisies – a playful riot of mischief and joyous, kinetic experimentation. Its giggling accomplices Marie I and Marie II agree that since the world has gone bad they’ll be bad too. Their pranks wreak havoc around Prague, as they leave the sugar daddies who dine them abandoned with huge bills, and scandalise a dance hall with their beer-stealing antics. The mayhem culminates in a debauched food fight, as the friends lay waste to a banquet that’s been set out for party officials, and swing from a giant chandelier. This irreverent carnival of excess and destruction was the antithesis of state ideology glorifying worker productivity and promising a bright utopian future for heroes of developed political consciousness. The authorities banned Daisies, citing the wastage of food as particularly reprehensible. An end-title dedicated the film “to all those whose sole source of indignation is a trampled-on trifle” – a barb aimed at hypocritical officials who would take offence at such scenes, while turning a blind eye to greater evils. 

The playful, anything-goes experimentation of Daisies, with its psychedelic onslaught of coloured filters and fragmented editing, made it the most formally vibrant and daring film of the Czech New Wave. Made up of absurdist, surreal episodes, these films drew on nature for their floods of striking imagery and abstracting patterns, and featured some of cinema’s most startling opening sequences. In Daisies, black-and-white archival imagery of warplanes strafing the ground sets the scene for a world ripped out of joint.".

Chytilová had a strict Catholic upbringing which influenced her film-making. '"I left that basic, personified faith," she later said. "It seemed like a crutch to me. I realised it wasn't true – but those moral codes are inside me." In fact, most of her films could be described as morality comedies' - Ronald Bergan (The Guardian).

There are different interpretations of Sedmikrásky; some people believe is it one of the great works of feminist cinema, whilst others stand that it is comment on the danger of consumerism within society - 'a socialistic warning bell against consumerism invoked inside a greedy, superfluous capitalistic system which revolves around luxurious pretensions?' (Janus Films). The two protagonists; Marie I and Marie II, give off a wholly care-free attitude. All the male characters in the film are simply there for the women's enjoyment; part of their pranks before being cast away. This reversal of the traditional role of the genders was particularly interesting within the film, but considering the final scene and comment at the end of the film; “to all those whose sole source of indignation is a trampled-on trifle”, I believe Chytilová made this film to tactfully show her stance on consumerism and the changing attitude towards it.

I really liked the film. Having watched it before, my second viewing of it could be spent picking out visual effects and particular scenes rather than focusing on the plot or context. I particularly liked;

The scene where Marie II cuts a hole in some plain bed linen and continues to rip it revealing a floral pattered quilt.

The framing of the first lunch scene, as there are three sat at the table, the angle of the camera makes the viewer feel as if they take up the forth place at the table. Also the costume of Marie I; the quintessentially 1960s shift dress with the scarf combined with her childish hair style in two ponytails plays up to  her absurd character.

The use of space and framing of the shot in the bar scene, where the two Maries drunkenly cause havoc at their own and the surrounding tables.

The change to black and white filming whenever they abandon male characters on trains at the station. Especially the close up shot of one of the men crying and waving goodbye from a train window, and the total nonchalance of the women as they leave him.

I found the scene in the bathroom, where the two Maries encounter the woman they refer to as an 'angel', very interesting as although it is made clear their feelings towards all of the male characters, their reaction to another woman is very different, almost adoration.

The scene where the two Maries are hiding in a crop field, which is in colour, I felt, as the viewer, that they stood out very clearly from the natural colours of the crops. The use of simple and natural crops contrasts the very decadent food used in the rest of the film.

The use of colour in the following scene, where Marie I wears a blue dress infront of a green door, and Marie II has the opposite.

I loved the bizarre scene where the two women have an argument and begin cutting up one another, and their floating heads appear disconnected to their bodies.

The eventual scene where the women come across a banquet and destroy most of the food, use the table as a runway and swing from the chandelier.



Other than the quality of the image, the content of this film is so absurd that it would be difficult to place when it might have been made. I agree with my lecturer that it doesn't look 50 years old, when it is compared to films released in the same year (1966), such as 'Alfie', 'Whose afraid of Viginia Woolf?' and 'The good, the bad and the ugly', you wouldn't imagine 'Daisies' was made at a similar time. This may however, be because the film itself was very contemporary, perhaps even ahead of it's time with the subjects it covers, since it was deemed unseemly and banned on release.