Daisies (1966)
★★½ — Daisies (1966)
Released in 1966 and running a lean 76 minutes, Daisies is a Czechoslovak comedy-drama from Filmové studio Barrandov that has spent the decades since its release earning a reputation as one of the more genuinely unusual films to emerge from the Czech New Wave. The premise is deceptively simple: two young women, both named Marie, set about a loosely connected series of pranks, meals, and small-scale destructions, treating the world around them as something to be consumed and discarded rather than respected. It is the kind of film that tends to polarise audiences pretty cleanly, and it has never really stopped doing so. For context on some of the other distinctive work coming out of Czechoslovakia in that era, it is worth checking out the blog's coverage of The Firemen's Ball (1967), directed the following year, and Men Without Wings (1946), an earlier piece of Czech cinema that shows quite how far the national film culture had travelled by the time Chytilová was working.
The director, Věra Chytilová, was one of the central figures of the Czech New Wave, and Daisies remains the film most closely associated with her name. She had trained at the FAMU film school in Prague, and her approach here sits at the more formally adventurous end of the movement, drawing on collage editing, abrupt shifts between colour stocks, and a general hostility to conventional storytelling that sets it apart even from its more experimental contemporaries. Persona (1966), reviewed elsewhere on the blog, arrived the same year and offers an interesting comparison point: another film from the 1960s that treated its two central women as something closer to a philosophical puzzle than a straightforward narrative subject, though the two films could hardly feel more different in tone. Chytilová co-wrote the screenplay with Ester Krumbachová, whose influence on the film's visual and conceptual texture is considered significant by most accounts of its production.
The two leads, Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová, carry the film almost entirely on their own energy. Neither character is written with conventional psychological depth, and that is entirely by design: they function more as forces of nature than as people you are meant to know. Helena Anýžová, Julius Albert, and Jan Klusák appear in supporting roles, largely as targets for the two Maries to bounce off, confuse, or simply ignore. The performances are physical and committed in a way that could easily tip into exhausting but which, depending on your tolerance for sustained absurdism, can also feel genuinely liberating. The film was banned by Czechoslovak authorities not long after its release, officially on grounds of depicting the wanton destruction of food, which says something both about the times and about how legible its provocations were to those in power.
Daisies (1966) is a whirlwind of anarchic playfulness. A Czech New Wave oddity that throws logic, decorum, and narrative coherence out the window in favour of pure, chaotic joy. Directed by Věra Chytilová, it follows two young women, as they giggle, prank, dismantle furniture, and (most famously) devour lavish meals with gleeful abandon. The film isn’t meant to be “understood” in a traditional sense; it’s a visual protest against conformity, consumerism, and the very idea that women must behave. In that spirit, it’s bold, liberating, and visually inventive. Shot in striking black-and-white and saturated colour sequences, with rapid cuts, collage-like editing, and a jazzy, eclectic soundtrack, Daisies feels like a fever dream choreographed by mischievous fairies who’ve stumbled into the human world and decided to break everything just for fun. There’s undeniable energy here, and moments of genuine wit, especially in its subversion of gender roles and social expectations. But for all its popping visuals and rebellious charm, the film often veers into “weird for weird’s sake.” Without emotional stakes, character depth, or even a loose plot thread to follow, it becomes more an aesthetic experience than a cinematic one. What starts as refreshing soon feels repetitive, and the relentless absurdity can alienate as much as it delights. Daisies is undeniably important (a feminist landmark) but it’s not for everyone. If you revel in surrealism and anti-narrative experimentation, you’ll adore it. If, like me, you crave some grounding beneath the chaos, it may leave you admiring its spirit while checking your watch.
I think that tension, between admiring a film's ambition and actually enjoying the experience of sitting with it, is one of the more honest things you can say about a work like this. Daisies earns its place in the canon and I would never argue otherwise, but a place in the canon and a place in your regular rotation are two different things. There is real craft here, and real nerve, and I came away with a genuine respect for what Chytilová was trying to do. Whether that respect translates into warmth is another matter entirely. Some films demand to be studied; not all of them demand to be loved.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1966 | Watched: 2026-04-30
Trailer
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Czechoslovakia: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Men Without Wings (1946) · The Firemen's Ball (1967) · The Pied Piper (1986)
More from the 1960s: Viy (1967) · Persona (1966) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
