Daisies

Czechoslovakia 1966 / 77 min. / DCP & Blu-ray / english subtitles

Director →  Věra Chytilová / Screenplay → Věra Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová, Pavel Juráček / Director of Photography →  Jaroslav Kučera / Editing → Miroslav Hájek / Music → Jiří Šust, Jiří Šlitr / Production Design →  Karel Lier / Cast → Jitka Cerhová, Ivana Karbanová, Julius Albert, Jan Klusák, Marie Češková, Marcela Březinová, Jiřina Myšková, Oldřich Hora, Václav Chochola

One of the highlights of Vera Chytilová’s filmography is the grotesque moral Daisies (1966). The surrealistic narrative about a pair of young women who decide to be as corrupt as the world around them does not arise from concrete socio-political realities. As a result, the biting account of conformity, petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness, and the limits of light-heartedness has timeless qualities. Daisies marked the beginning of Chytilová’s collaboration with Ester Krumbachová, who contributed to the eccentric costumes and script. The collage-like visual component then gave a lot of space for experimentation to the cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera. It is still an original gem of Czech cinema of the 1960s, which infuriated the communist officials of the time.