Title: Daisies
Rating: 4 Stars
Having finished the top twenty-five films of the BFI Sight and Sound list, I’m now continuing on with my journey. Next up is Daisies, coming in at twenty-eight.
Keeping in line with, I’d say, most of the films in the BFI list, this is another weird one. This film was made in Czechoslovakia in 1966. I was about to say that this is the first film on the list made in a country that no longer exists, but then I remembered Man With A Movie Camera was made in the USSR. For both films, it’s interesting what filmmakers could get away with in a heavily censored political system.
One common factor in both films is a lack of plot. Daisies can best be described as a series of vignettes featuring two young women, both named Marie (apparently in the official credit, one is credited as Marie I the brunette and Marie II the blonde).
The film opens with military planes strafing the ground interspersed with the gears of large machinery. The film closes with bombs and the destruction of war.
In between, the two Maries embark on a series of adventures. In several of them, they flirt with much older men that buy them dinner. The end result of these vignettes is that the Maries abandon the older men at the train station. In another scene, they upstage a dance duo at what appears to be a 1920s era dinner club. The two Maries are seemingly always on the lookout for food and occasionally commit acts of theft. At one point the women get upset that a farmer takes no notice of them and worry that they’re losing their identities. In one of the final scenes, they sneak into a dining room where a massive banquet has been prepared. There they engorge themselves and start a food fight. After mysteriously landing in a sea needing to be rescued, when they are back in the banquet room they try to clean up their mess.
If this all seems disjointed, well that’s because it is. It’s a short film, coming in at under eighty minutes, but even so, given the nonlinear nature of it, it would have been a tough go if the film had lasted much longer.
In a film like this, you can’t measure it by how exciting it was or how much time you spent on the edge of your seat. What matters is what thoughts it inspires in you as you watch it.
One of my first as I watched this was how the Hays Code had straightjacketed American films for decades. I can only imagine that young American cinematic auteurs would have gone to some art house to watch a film like this and be slack jawed. These were films that just weren’t allowed to be made in the US. By 1966, the Hays Code was not long for the world (going away in 1968). Seeing a film like this and then comparing it to the staid American films being made at the same time make it apparent that the Hays Code did not go away a day too soon.
This is interesting to me considering the fact that it was made under a Socialist regime. There was strict censorship in place, but the film was approved, made and broadly released.
I’m guessing that it might have passed muster because it can be interpreted as a message against consumerism, which is much more closely aligned with capitalism than socialism. The two women eat to excess, take advantage of wealthy men, and seemingly live at best amoral lives. Possibly the socialist censors saw this as a condemnation of Western values.
The film satirizes the patriarchy. It’s most obvious as the women take advantage of the wealthy, stuffy old men that buy them whatever they want to eat with a clear intention of getting something, most likely sexual favors, in return. The men are inevitably thwarted when, at the train station, the women trick the old man onto the train and then jump off or get on the train at the last moment, leaving the old man to futilely run after the train. At one point the two Maries pretend to cry as they see off one of the old men, but once gone, they scornfully laugh.
The Maries themselves are stereotypes of empty, doll like women. In the opening scene, there is a creaking sound overlaying the women’s movement that recreates the sound of a marionette. The women speak in high pitched, squeaky voices. Their mannerisms and makeup are grossly exaggerated.
In a couple of scenes they are both eating apples which would seem to be a pretty obvious nod to Eve tempting Adam in the Garden of Eden. Is there a better metaphor for the weakness of the patriarchy than the story of Adam’s fall?
It’s interesting that the only time that the two Maries seem to experience actual angst is when the farmer seems to ignore them. Are the two Maries so used to having the male gaze upon them that when it stops that it disturbs them? For a woman, is no longer being the target of the male gaze a glimpse of their own mortality?
Speaking of mortality, the fact that the antics of these two young women are bookended by scenes of destruction and mechanization seem important. Is the film saying that the two women’s gluttony and what could almost be called their nihilism is a rational response for the time that they live in? Recall that in 1966 the world was in the midst of the Cold War, where mutual assured destruction was the military doctrine of the day. It seemed, if not likely, at least feasible that the world could end in nuclear conflagration. Given that, just living for the moment and gorging yourself on whatever you can get your hands on could be considered a rational response.
One thing that I probably haven’t adequately described is how the two Maries are agents of chaos in whatever vignette they’re in. As I was watching it, I kept flashing back to the Marx brothers, specifically Chico and Harpo. The two Maries, unlike Harpo, both talk. However, like Chico and Harpo, they seemed to like nothing better than to go into a staid, conventional situation and then, with their hijinks, knock it on its head. Like the Marx brothers at their best, there is almost a nihilist element to their chaos. They do it just because they can.
I gave it a 4 star rating. It’s not exactly a film that I would sit down and watch on a Saturday night with popcorn. However, I did find it interesting for what I believe that it was trying to say. I also appreciated the historical context in which it was made. At times, I did find the two Maries to be funny and entertaining. It is, like other films on the BFI, so unconventional that its unconventionality made it more interesting. For all of those reasons, it was a film worth watching.
dorkenstein 