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Daisies


Věra Chytilová’s classic of surrealist cinema is perhaps also the most adventurous and anarchic Czech movie of the 1960s.

A satirical, wild and irreverent story of teen rebellion. Two young women revolt against a degenerate and oppressive society, attacking symbols of wealth and bourgeois culture. A riotous, punk-rock poem of a film that is both hilarious and mind-warpingly innovative, Daisies was banned in native Czechoslovakia and director Věra Chytilová was forbidden to work until 1975.

A defiant feminist statement? Nihilistic, avant-garde comedy? It remains a cinematic enigma and its influence is still felt today - from Baise Moi to Thelma & Louise and the in films of Bertrand Blier, Catherine Breillat and Gregg Araki.

Special features:

- Digitally re-mastered with restored picture and sound
- Optimal quality dual layer disc
- Booklet featuring new essays

What A Disgrace wrote:April 27, 2009

Extras according to MovieMail

- New filmed interview with director Věra Chytilová
- Booklet essays
- All new director-approved digital transfer from original negative materials with restored picture and sound.

Great news, as the Czech release has no subs as always. What are the chances for a SR release of her other films (particularly Faunovo velmi pozdní odpoledne, and possibly her also unavailable debut)?

Based on precedent (i.e. Valerie), I'd say this is probably going to be the same Czech release, but with English subtitles. But that's no bad thing - it'll certainly be infinitely better than my old taped-off-BBC2 version, which I think was an ancient cinema print complete with burned-in subtitles (as opposed to the usual BBC electronic ones).

Oh dear God thank you thank you thank you. Finally, an acceptable version of this film!

domino harvey wrote:Oh dear God thank you thank you thank you. Finally, an acceptable version of this film!

Actually, the Facets isn't too bad - it's way ahead of their usual Czech standards. But the Second Run should certainly be a cut above.

The Facets is terrible. True, it's not as bad as their Valerie, but that's still no reason to dole out praise! I've been waiting a long time to be able to have a good copy of this title on my shelf

I'm with Michael: Facets's Daisies is pretty good. The main problems with it are the unsightly cover, the fact that the text-based features are on the disc rather than in a booklet, and the $30 SRP. The new Second Run disc should be better all around.
Nevertheless, Daisies is already available on so many previous discs that I might have preferred to have one of her later films like Prefab Story, Wolf Chalet, or Tainted Horseplay. This isn't meant as a criticism of Second Run, though.

As long as SR keep dishing out Czech New Wave classics like this then there is still hope for a release in the future of Forman's BLACK PETER and anything by Evald Schorm.

The Facets DAISIES filled a hole but it can now be buried for good. At least one will be able to read all the subs on this new release since unenhanced white leave a lot to be desired (even if they are timed correctly).

Awesome news! I hope they release Fruit Of Paradise in the future too.

-ignore post, didn't realize link at top showed the cover-

Ah, wonderful news! Here is a comparison of various transfers.

Never trust a person who doesn't love Czech New Wave Cinema.

Once again, Second Run comes to the rescue! I'll be ordering 2 copies of this--one for my library, and one for myself.

Person wrote:Here is a comparison of various transfers.

Interesting comparison. Aren't a lot of the scenes filmed in black and white supposed to have a bluish tone, as shown in the Facets caps? On the Facets disc, many scenes are bluish, whereas others a different color such as green, or are rendered in normal grey scale. But it looks like the producers of all three other discs might have removed the blue form those scenes in telecine, perhaps assuming they were supposed to appear as normal black and white. Can anyone shed light on this?

I'm pretty sure the version shown on BBC2 in the early 1990s had bluish-tinted monochrome sequences.

Anyway, I think it must now be a racing certainty that Second Run is using the same master as was used for the Czech and Spanish DVDs - which would appear to be a good thing on the basis of those caps.

I hope this is not the definitive cover. It would be a little disappointing given the amazing stuff SR has produced in the past.

Skritek wrote:I hope this is not the definitive cover. It would be a little disappointing given the amazing stuff SR has produced in the past.

It's almost certainly temporary - Second Run are usually pretty conscientious about Czech diacritics, and Věra Chytilová's name doesn't have the full set yet.

Talking of covers, I've now seen the actual Divorce Iranian Style cover, and the shrunken reproductions don't do it justice at all.

What in this film caused it to be rated 18? Am I forgetting something, because I remember it being fairly mild

It originally got an X certificate from the BBFC, which is what the 18 used to be known as - but back in 1966/67, it only banned under-sixteens: the age limit wasn't raised to 18 until 1971, when a new classification was introduced for teenagers (AA, which banned under-fourteens - in the 1980s this became the 15 certificate, which by the end of that decade had split to 15 and 12).

So it's a racing certainty that Daisies will get a 15 or possibly even a 12 when resubmitted today (Valerie and her Week of Wonders is another film that switched from X to 15), but in the absence of official confirmation I suspect Second Run is simply printing the exact equivalent classification of what it received in the 1960s.

Similar to the way Rashomon was originally an X on its British cinema release in the 50s and these days is a 12 on the BFI DVD?

colinr0380 wrote:Similar to the way Rashomon was originally an X on its British cinema release in the 50s and these days is a 12 on the BFI DVD?

Absolutely. From the early 1950s to the early 1970s, there were essentially just three classifications - U, A and X. U remains to this day, and admits anyone (the exact equivalent of the MPAA's G), A was roughly similar to PG (but under-sixteens had to be accompanied by an adult), and X was the only classification that actually banned anyone from watching the film.

As a result, even very mild adult-oriented stuff (certainly including Rashomon's basic subject matter) would often get an X - but now that we have a much more complex system, films tend to get much more appropriate classifications: 12 for Rashomon sounds about right, as does a 15 for the gorier Throne of Blood. On the other hand, Repulsion remains an 18, so it's not always true that films get milder classifications today: sixteen-year-olds could have watched it between 1965 and 1971!

I'm glad SR is releasing this, and I'm especially looking forward to the filmed interview with Chytilová. Others here have defended the Facets version, and although I agree with them and think Chytilová's letter is a useful supplement, I'm definitely picking up the SR.

At this point, Czechoslovak New Wave fans have to be region-free, because SR have become the label of choice for these releases in the English-speaking world. Frankly, I wish they'd take a look at Facets' catalog, and get the R2 rights to any East-Central European titles therein.

We showed this as an example of Czech cinema in a course I taught on at university. IIRC, it was largely met with baffled 'wtf?' responses.

Michael - was this banned for ever on its original production? Wasn't one of the 'issues' with it the shocking waste of food in one of the scenes?

Person wrote:Ah, wonderful news! Here is a comparison of various transfers.

Never trust a person who doesn't love Czech New Wave Cinema.

I may be mistaken but isn't that woman in the sixth cap Helena Anýzová, the grandmother in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and the phantom figure in The Cremator? I haven't seen Daisies for ages, so I can't be sure but she has a quiet unforgettable face and I was impressed by her presence in those two films. Imdb states theses two films as the only ones she made as an actress and a handful of others she did as a costume designer, including two by Jakubisko, but can it be trusted? Does anyone else know anything about her? Is she in Daisies?

I agree she looks like that. I checked all three versions of Czech IMDBs and she is never listed among the actresses for Daisies. It's strange, since the two Marie have cameos in Mucednici Lasky, and also get credits for the few seconds we can see them.

Dr Amicus wrote:Michael - was this banned for ever on its original production? Wasn't one of the 'issues' with it the shocking waste of food in one of the scenes?

The whole "banned for ever" thing has been thrown around so liberally with regard to Czech cinema that a sub-editor even "corrected" the entry on Jaromil Jires that I wrote for the Rough Guide To Film to allege that The Joke was "banned for ever" as well!

Fortunately, I was able to correct it back before publication, because as far as I'm able to establish only four films were formally "banned for ever" as part of a government edict issued in 1973 - Jan Němec’s The Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech, 1966), Miloš Forman’s The Fireman’s Ball (Hoří, má panenko!, 1967), Vojtěch Jasný’s All My Good Countrymen (Všichni dobří rodáci, 1967) and Evald Schorm’s The End of a Priest (Farářův konec, 1968).

Lots of other films were banned post-1968, of course, and I think Daisies was among them (and that reason certainly rings a bell) - but it's just that quartet that had that emphatically permanent ban.

filmghost wrote:I may be mistaken but isn't that woman in the sixth cap Helena Anýzová, the grandmother in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and the phantom figure in The Cremator? I haven't seen Daisies for ages, so I can't be sure but she has a quiet unforgettable face and I was impressed by her presence in those two films. Imdb states theses two films as the only ones she made as an actress and a handful of others she did as a costume designer, including two by Jakubisko, but can it be trusted? Does anyone else know anything about her? Is she in Daisies?

As far as I could establish when doing background research for my Valerie intro, she was best mates with Ester Krumbachová - who of course was also a costume designer on many New Wave films. She wasn't an actress, but Krumbachová persuaded to appear in several of her films, presumably including Daisies - into which Krumbachová had a massive creative input, just as she did with most of the things she worked on, and usually far beyond what the credits suggested. The auteur theory has much to answer for in her case, as she's just as important a figure in the Czech New Wave as any of the directors, as they'd be the first to acknowledge.