beautiful, innovative, quirky, and fun.

Visually pleasing at best. No there aren't any societal or political statements lying under the surface of it, it's just a fun movie where two Czech girls search for free food at the expense of sad old men. Some of the scenes were very interesting but probably won't watch this again.

This was like a "freestyle" movie, in terms of acting, directing, editing.... "let's do this (whatever) and see what results we have"

This film brought me pure joy!

I adore Daisies! Czech auteur Věra Chytilová's Czechoslovakian surrealist comedy Daisies (1966) remains the most creative and playful absurdist film I have ever seen. Daisies is perhaps the silliest satire of bourgeois decadence in a picture. Daisies combines slapstick, surrealist imagery, absurdist humor, visual metaphors, and verbal wit. Chytilová's daring direction takes a goofy and colorful approach to satirizing the impoverished masses left starving by the Czech government with her anarchist attitude. She accomplishes this by having her dual heroines constantly eating, while not working, and simply conning creepy old gentlemen into paying for their meals. Daisies is superbly imaginative and unparalleled in innovation. Věra Chytilová was a genius! Editor Miroslav Hájek splices together montages of dancing, the girls cutting each other apart, to a myriad of transitions with collages of all types of visually stimulating imagery. I simply loved when the girls wanted to do something new, then Hájek cuts to them rolling down a hill or they see a farmer watering his garden, then it cuts to them walking away with a dozen stolen corn on the cobs. Daisies simply cannot be compared to any other film. You know Daisies is a sheer blast of pleasure as it clocks in at only 76 minutes of quirky personality and silly delights. Cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera picks careful blocking in frame to ensure the girls look extra silly and we're often focused on their mesmerizing eyes. The crafty cinematography choices and perspective shifts from panning side shots, tilting shots, turns into bird's eye view, then suddenly we're in far wide shots following the ladies rolling down a hill or chasing a train. It's all so creative and inventive. Every single scene in Daisies is a masterclass in filmmaking. Writers Pavel Juráček, Věra Chytilová, and Ester Krumbachová bring a hilariously absurdist sense of humor alongside an anarchist's temperament to Daisies. There's not really a plot as it's just these two girls not seeking love or employment, but with simple aspirations to keep eating, dancing, and laughing. I love how the girls are written. Fun is had out of the most mundane or dire of situations as well as all new ways to dupe men into paying for their endless meals. If they commit an evil act of greed, gluttony, or selfishness, then they simply remark that they don't care in the ultimate innocent kid's version of punk nihilism. You can easily tell why Daisies is a watershed moment for the Czechoslovak New Wave film movement with its peculiar jests, skillful craftsmanship, and negative manner of speech. Taking aim at the patriarchy and authoritarianism by having these ladies not listen to their elders or men and doing what they want of free will instead of communist ideals following their way through life. I love that Daisies is essentially feminist in nature as the girls have no cares or desires for men other than their wallets and seek no employment other than ways they can break into places to nab more food. Daisies' writing is anarchist, feminist, silly, playful, satirical, existentialist, absurdist, fun loving, creative, and original all the time. These girls are the original Romy and Michele's High School Reunion or Party Girl. Life is a gas and they will inhale, except all the fun is eating food, playfully dancing, and loving the basic joy of cutting things up with scissors. Ivana Karbanová is adorable as Daisies' heroine Marie II the blonde. She was a salesclerk who made her big eyes stare and just dance towards her meal with delight. I like her character trait of not really loving any man and desiring to cut any phallic imagery with her scissors. She is sublimely silly. Jitka Cerhová is gorgeous as the Daisies' heroine Marie I the brunette. Her playful eyes and big smile charm as does her playful dancing and bottomless appetite. Her displays of boredom to the point of ennui or sudden vivaciousness in dance and drink are delightful. I really love Jitka in Daisies in particular. She's so striking. Both actresses were amateurs as Jitka was just a student when she was cast. I found both Ivana and Jitka absolutely breathtakingly beautiful and hilarious in unexpected ways throughout Daisies. They find all sorts of ways to just look or smile at something in an interesting fashion. Their performances feel specific and insane to compound upon all of Daisies' visual chaos in fun ways. They feel nonchalant and excitable, capable of anything really. Production designer Karel Lier creates an ever changing garden of delights for Marie I and Marie II's bedroom. The blues and greens are stunning, but I really had fun looking at set decorators František Straka, Bedřich Čermák, and Roman Svoboda wallpaper collage of infinite magazine clippings. Their house looks like a serial killer's ransom note. The cute pottery and furnishings to layers of blankets on the bed or prop scissors everywhere is fun. How can you not enjoy art direction from Jaroslav Kučera and Ester Krumbachová shifting the color scheme indoors to complement what the girls are wearing? Composers Jiří Šust and Jiří Šlitr create playful film orchestration out of random instruments, often timed to the actresses movements for a lark. Their constantly changing music ranges from 1920's flapper tunes to folk music of the 1960's in style. I loved how outrageously brazen the girls' dancing is to these ever changing musical parts. Songwriters Jiří Suchý and Eva Pilarová take into account the varying eras and genres for really original music for Daisies. Sound designers Ladislav Hausdorf use repeating typewriter taps or other goofy noises to emphasize the strange sounds the actresses are making. Costume designer Ester Krumbachová astounds me with a dozen different outfits from 60's mod sundresses and polka dot bikinis to gowns and lingerie made out of whatever is in the scene. Ester's outfits are as cute and playful as Daisies' belligerent silly heroines. Makeup artists Ladislav Bacílek and Libuše Beranová weave the cutest bob haircut on the blonde and the prettiest curls into the brunette's stunning haircut. Visually, the costumes, hair, and makeup in Daisies is imperative to the oddity that is this art film. In all, Daisies is totally original for a brief display of surrealist artfulness and absurdist hilarity.

Another weird, historically-charged piece of Czech cinema! You're welcome ☺️ As a political statement and as abstract art, this film has a lot to offer. In terms of pure entertainment value, it's hit-or-miss, but it has enough charm to skirt through anyway. You could do a LOT of analysis on the imagery and symbolism (which my partner has already done; love ya 😘) but I won't get into too much of it here. The important thing is it requires a little bit of context on Central European history, but it's quite effective. The satire works well (it almost feels like the movie is making fun of itself at times) as it ranges from darkly funny to laugh-out-loud hilarious. But be warned: this movie is WEIRD. It's only like an hour and 15 minutes (which is for the best) but it can get a little exhausting anyway. It's kinda Lynchian and avant garde, which again I'm sure has some symbolism, but it's not always clear without a very in-depth analysis. Anyway, Daisies is an entertaining, weird movie that you might just wanna Czech out 😉

Duas garotas, de personalidades fortes e rebeldes, trolando os velhos com predileções pelas ninfetas, recheada de simbolismos, cenas super coloridas, alternando com o preto e branco e o monocromático, entre cortadas com uma colcha de retalhos, dirigindo sensivelmente por uma mulher, todos os ingredientes perfeitos para um filme maravilhoso, entretanto achei o entediante, é uma pena, afinal uma bela obra que eu não soube degustar...

Popularly regarded as the masterpiece of Czech 'militant feminist' director Věra Chytilová, Daisies is a brightly colored, absurdist rejection of social norms and the expectations of women by the culture of the day, a stance that you wouldn't expect to find in 1960's Czecholslovakia even before the Soviet invasion (which subsequently resulted in its almost immediate censorship. Taking a full step back from the film's significance in the depiction of women in film, Daisies is a brilliantly edited and visionary Dadaist comedy (scenes like the mutual dismemberment and the ride up the dumbwaiter stand out in particular) that plays with color in unique and interesting ways, championed by a pair of protagonists that just want to eat, drink, and lounge to their hearts' content. But Chytilová is not shy about the justification for why her two antiheroines act in their unrestrained, thoughtless manner - they are women in a society that has been dominated to that point by men (the famous scene of the duo slicing various phallic foods for their dinner really can only carry so many interpretations). In response to this genetic and social slight, Cerhová's and Karbanová's two Maries take advantage of gullible older men to live an ultra-Bohemian lifestyle with surreal twists and an ultimate air of fatalism; probably the film's greatest flaw is some of the more thematically obvious or hamfisted moments, particularly the conclusion ("if we work hard and put everything right, we'll be happy"), but some slack shuld be given considering how few parallels a film of this type had upon release. A subversive piece for its day, Daisies is still pretty darn entertaining with a great sense of originality and a tight runtime. (4/5)

The premise: Two beautiful young women who act like children want to "go bad". But it's not what you might be thinking because they're not interested in satisfying male desire, and by extension, nor perhaps the audience's. In fact, in their quest to fulfill their voracious appetites (for food and booze), they unknowingly frustrate the men who happen to get caught in their orbit. Stylistically, it's quite fun, with wacky foley effects, colorful manipulation of the images, and some surreal sets. Actually, watching the daisies' antics is pretty fun, too, and while a larger critique can be drawn from scenes such as the one where they cut each other up (rendering themselves body parts in the same way the camera dissects women's bodies), the film overall feels like a formal exercise in cinematic deconstruction, albeit a fun one.

1001 movies to see before you die. This was bizarre, but at least it was more entertaining and original than many other trippy movies. Saw it on TCM.

Food. Daisies. Food. Old man. Dresses. Scissors. Food. Drink. Food. Trains. Trifle.

I love this film. The visuals were creative and colourful, the editing was snappy and unpredictable and kept me entertained, and the two leads were endearing and ridiculous. Nothing made sense, and it was great.

I’m not sure what to say about Daisies, because I’m not entirely sure what happens in Daisies. It’s an incoherent mess where logic doesn’t really apply. It features two young women obsessed with eating (occasionally using it as a metaphor for sex) and asking existential questions. We are bounced around from one scene to the next without any connecting story and the camera flashes through countless filters throughout the runtime without any obvious reason. In most ways this defies my description of a movie, or at the very least it doesn’t have anything I’m looking for in a movie. With no plot I feel like they left me adrift to just watch images flash in front of my eyes and try desperately to apply meaning that is never apparent. Daisies is so nonsensical that it comes across like the raw footage taken by a bunch of young children playing around with their first movie camera. “What does this do? Oh, cool, it makes everything red!” “What if we played this squeaking sound every time you moved, so you’d be like a robot?!” Kids playing can be funny, so this wasn’t as painful to watch as other pointless movies I’ve seen, but that doesn’t make it good.

Daises is a audaciously bizarre farce that knows no cinematic boundaries.

Daisies is one of the great landmarks that Czech New Wave gave to the world. During 70 minutes, director Vera Chytilova creates an experience as anarchic and outrageous as her main characters. The subversion of the moral grounds of Soviet controlled Eastern Europe is on full effect when Marie I and Marie II are unleashed in a foray of hedonism, liberation and destruction, portrayed by the unique way in which Chytilova playfully deconstructs and pushes the limits of film language. The result is, simultaneously, a psychedelic testament of cinema as a medium for nonconformity and a cathartic display of female liberation, both surely standing the test of time.

Daisies is an entertaining aesthetic and hallucinogenic explosion of energetic and incoherent images - a whacky and anarchic female-led comedy.

Two young women named "Marie" declare that the world is spoiled, so they are going to be spoiled themselves. They embark on a series of wild, surreal pranks that involve satisfying their wants and being destructive. An amazingly entertaining and creative film that was promptly banned by the Czech government for "encouraging the wanton". Yes indeed.

7.6/10, my review: http://wp.me/p1eXom-2rz

cinegeek.de Our Daily Free Stream: Vera Chytilova - Daisies (engl. subt.). Nicht viele Filme handeln vom Nihilismus, die so süss und albern sind wie Daisies. Vielleicht liegts an diesem Mangel an Ernsthaftigkeit, der Daisies davor bewahrt hat, in den seriösen Kanon der Filmklassiker aufgenommen zu werden? Vera Chytilova hat die psychodelische feministische Farce (existiert dieses Genre überhaupt?) 1966 in Prag gedreht. Wir folgen Marie I und Marie II, die ausgelassen und liebenswürdig ein Chaos veranstalten mit den Sitten und Gebräuchen, die so eine Gesellschaft uns auferlegt. Die Beiden glauben, dass der einzige Weg, sich in einer verdorbenen Welt zu bewegen, der ist, auch verdorben zu sein. Deshalb stören und verzerren sie jede Situation, in die sie geraten. Wer nun bezweifelt, dass Daisies nicht auch den Weg zu absoluter Freiheit weisen könnte, der irrt: Vera Chytilovas experimenteller Ansatz stellt kein Hindernis dar, für die politisch philosophische Botschaft von Daisies - bietet aber trotzdem viel Spass! Das ist einer dieser Filme, denen du dich am besten ganz anpasst, um möglichst viel davon mitzunehmen. Wenig Zugeständnisse werden gemacht an den Zuschauer, immerhin gibts aber durchgängig was zu lachen. Verschiedene visuelle Stilrichtungen werden probiert: Manchmal bietet Daisies Animations-Szenen, dann Musical Einlagen, dokumentarisches Archiv-Material und ganz viel Slapstick. Alles frei, alles in der Schwebe - radikal genug um in der CSSR verboten worden zu sein. Klar, heute wirkt das natürlich wie eine Auszeichnung!

One of the first films of the Czech New Wave Movement and easily one of the best.