A Wild Ride With An Explosive Ending: A Blu-Ray Review Of Daisies

“If everything’s going bad, we’re going bad as well.” The revelation that fuels Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, Marie I comes to it at the end of the opening scene and slaps Marie II in the face.

A seminal film from the Czech New Wave, Second Run’s Blu-Ray release is an upgrade on their 2009 DVD release. All the original bonus features are back, along with two additional commentaries, and it’s a set that truly lives up to the film it’s all about.
Daisies wouldn’t need bonus features, though, to make a wonderful addition to anyone’s media library. A film that consists of the two girls’ antics, after they decide to embrace being bad (and the film is much more than that, but that’s essentially what passes for plot), Marie I (Jitka Cerhová, in the pigtails)  and Marie II (Ivana Karbanová, in the flower crown) manipulate older men, spend time at home, eat, dance around a metaphoric tree of Eden, and everything else in between.
In his cogent essay on the film, Peter Hames, writes: “They have no individual identity, psychology, or history… their roles are interchangeable.” Due to the way Chytilová plays with color, it sometimes feels like they’re the 60’s incarnate, dropped into a film about the 20’s to cause disruption. This is most exemplified by the club scene, where two dancers are dancing the Charleston on stage and the Maries have a booth in the back. Slowly they start upstaging the dancers, with Chytilová cutting back and forth between the reactions in black & white, and the footage of the Maries dyed in color. It’s a clash of decades, with the outcome being a hilariously protracted sequence of the band trying to play the Maries off.
Hames quotes certain lines from the film but the translation he uses is different from the subtitles on Second Run’s disc. He calls the Maries dolls, with their rigid movements, embellished by exaggerated squeaks, but “dolls” can be translated to “virgins” (Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan address this on their commentary) and, depending on what you watch or read first, his essay is the first time you’re hearing of them being dolls.
Hames also has a commentary with Daniel Bird, that follows a question & answer format that works well. In Ellinger and Deighan’s commentary, they talk about the ways Daisies differs from a romantic comedy, and the ways it’s like a fairy tale, with its infatuation with food.
Cerhová and Karbanová are electric onscreen. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, you can’t take your eyes off of them, and while Daisies is a film that has streaks of great dialogue, there are also long stretches where it’s just their silent hijinks to the playful beat of Jirí Slitr and Jirí Sust’s music
That being said, I’ve never seen a movie where the discussion was so centered around the director, Chytilová. Ester Krumbachová, who co-wrote the screenplay with Chytilová, designed the costumes, and acted as art director with Jaroslav Kučera (Daisies’ cinematographer and Chytilová’s husband) is also the subject of much praise but even with a director like Hitchcock, where you refer to his films as Hitchcock films, the stars of his movies are talked about, as well.
Cerhová and Karbanová didn’t do much acting after Daisies (Karbanová had one film prior and Daisies was Cerhová’s first role), and Chytilová is that big a deal – a trailblazer for female directors. Also, novel —women not playing it cool but conveying their excitement when they feel excited. The Maries are constantly bouncing in their chairs, arms impatient, and it’s a rush to see enthusiasm that unbridled onscreen.
Against that, the few moments of darkness in Daisies can be quite startling. In Jasmina Bralic‘s documentary on Chytilová, Journey (2004), Chytilová talks about a suicide attempt and there’s a scene where Marie II leaves the gas on that’s moved over quickly but is more of a slap than the one Marie I gives her. There’s also a brief scene of the Maries in blackface that probably has more connotation today than was meant at the time with this film but it’s still a shock.
Is Daisies meant to be a criticism of the Maries or a celebration of their bravado? “Does it matter?” the Maries would respond, and the answer is “no,” but that doesn’t mean it’s unpleasant to speculate. A wild ride with an explosive ending, Daisies is a movie that you don’t see every day – pure, infectious verve caught on celluloid.
Daisies is available now on all-region Blu-Ray from Second Run.