dziga-3 Reviews

Daisies (1966)

FEMINIST DADA LIVES!

[17 August 2000]

Chytilova surpasses even the genial Jiri Menzel in her blissful critique of the pieties and austerities associated with the Czech Stalinist regime under President Husak. DAISIES is an exercise in revolutionary modernism, anarch-dadaist in spirit and form. 21 deputies objected in parliament to the extravagant waste of food in the film, and Chytilova had to defend her film on communist-moral grounds: i.e. the two female protagonists (Marie 1 Jitka Cerkova, Marie 2 Ivana Karbanova) were spoilt brats to be condemned as so much waste-matter in the body politic of the workers' state. But we know that they are feminist anarchists, living (in terms of the plot narrative) off silly old men who buy them dinners, and (in terms of the poetic texture of the film) calling everything into question with the unquenchable brio of cartoon characters (they eat even photographs of food from glossy magazines). We, the audience, are happily infected (even today in the new millennium) by the blessed spirit of nihilism Chytilova has conjured up in those dangerous and exhilarating days of the Prague Spring. First there was Kafka (AMERIKA), then there was Hasek (THE GOOD SOLDIER SVEJK), and then there was Vera Chytilova. DAISIES is in my top ten films ever made.

Teenage Gang Debs (1966)

A worthy sixties curio obviously banned on Pudding Island

[7 September 1999]

Surprisingly well directed considering its ephemeral trashcan image. I liked the photography of the fight scenes, almost worthy of Kurosawa. I liked the Jacobean amorality and black humour. And in its genre it was quite dramatic. No doubt hundreds of minor films like this are ignored by the critics and banned by the authorities, only to be resurrected on C4 Eurotrash-cum-Exploitica slots. Of course the nasty heroine had to have her come-uppance in the end, but there was enough action and atmosphere of a non-prurient satanic sex'n'violence to make the ending a pure palinode.

Daisies (1966)

Pure Dada Jouissance Galore

[7 April 1999]

For its renewal of the spirit of DADA, for its sixties potlatch, for its fine excess, for its playful modernist montage, this is certainly the most formally revolutionary of all the Czech New Wave films I have seen. It escapes and transcends the heavy moral dissidence of the other great Prague Spring directors, and even manages to transcend its time and place. An authentic work of creative genius, its 'high spirits' belong to another world, a world which subverts the grip of everyday totalitarianism, and, as DADA updated, topples the philistines left and right.

Mouchette (1967)

Marginalised schoolgirl transfigured by grace of cinematic poetry

[15 February 1999]

Arguably the most moving film ever made, Mouchette captures the innocence, ordinariness and grace of a culturally deprived young girl, bullied by her fellow school pupils, befriended and abused by the local drunkard, living in the most appalling physical conditions. Above all this film is (and that includes for atheists like me) the one that transfigures the banality of a marginalised existence into a poetic grace that is in origin religious (and Catholic at that). I defy any viewer not to be moved to tears of joy as Mouchette finds her salvation in suicide, playing still the games of a child as she rolls over on the river bank. This film would be in my top ten ever. Long live Bresson, long live poetic cinema.

La maternelle (1933)

Marie Epstein's popular front poetry compares with VIGO same year

[10/10 · 15 February 1999]

Until I saw this film at a Cinema Conference in Aberdeen in 1995 I was ignorant of the fact that a woman director had produced poetic and social cinema comparable with Vigo's ZERO DE CONDUITE (certainly one of the greatest films ever). Vigo in 1933 is revolutionary anarchist with modernist poetry at his finger tips; Epstein in 1933 is warm-hearted popular front realism with magnificent performances by nursery school kids, though the main schoolgirl is a little older (and in love with her teacher, like the protagonist in Leontine Sagan's MAIDENS IN UNIFORM 1931). And that teacher (unqualified according to the authorities) is a young Madeleine Renaud, dazzlingly soft focus in the tradition of French poetic realism. It should be shown this film as source material for pedagogical controversy and reform (Epstein's approach is after Rousseau progressive and child-centred). And it should be on everybody's list as one of the greatest films of all time. You can't have your Vigo without your Epstein, not that Blunkett would care for either.