The film is not just messy, but chaotic. Going through different styles of storytelling and colors of the picture, the infantileness and innocence of the main characters, although they in turn are “spoiled” and in the end their own madness overtakes them.
The picture is simple, without much plot, but at the same time it makes it free.
And it was because of the too innovative vision that it was banned in her homeland of Czechoslovakia, but nevertheless resonated abroad.
The film is part of a new wave series, which makes it inspiring and engaging because it is brash and provocative.
Vera Khitilova is an iconic figure of the “Czech miracle”. In his works, the director relied on the traditions of the Czech avant-garde. In 1966, Vera Khitilova made the film “Dags”. Film critics describe it as an “avant-garde ironic fantasy about modern society” or an “ironic philosophical-feminist charade” permeated by “outrage and provocation.” If before the Czech cinema remained censored and official dogmas, in the work of Hitilova fully manifested true freedom.
“If everything goes wrong, we will be spoiled,” the main characters decide. The decision is preceded by documentary footage of the devastation caused by the war. Girls decide to conform to the world around them. The road to spoilage begins with the symbolic eating of apples from a tree. Subsequent shots refer the viewer not so much to the biblical plot, but to the ancient Greek myth of the golden apple planted by the goddess of discord Eris. Also, the second Mary puts on her head a wreath of flowers – a symbol of spring (Mary’s youth), idleness, earthly pleasures and a sybaritic way of life. In general, the symbols of "Margaritas" are numerous flowers, plants, fruits, leaves, wreaths and floral patterns in clothes and decorations, butterflies. Even the name of the film is “flower”: in Christianity, daisies are a symbol of innocence and simplicity. They represent not only femininity, youth and beauty, but also the transience of this life. The youth of the two Marys is often emphasized in the film. Only closer to the end of the heroines ask the question: “What will happen to us?” Youth pushes this question aside, but growing up puts it first. Throughout the film, the girls continue to eat endlessly, deceive men and indulge in entertainment.
The key theme of “Margaritas” is destruction, destruction – the disintegration of the whole into parts, the disintegration of meaning. The apparent disharmony and violation of the canons of artistic construction contribute to the implementation of the director’s plan. The aesthetic structure of the film completely coincides with the content. Vera Khitilova refers to the artistic form corresponding to the content of the picture, widely using collage, and not only in the visual series, but in drama and acting. The heroines themselves cut illustrations from magazines, create installations, make applications and collages, paste them on the walls of their bedroom. In addition, the director widely uses gags characteristic of silent comedies, turns to avant-garde techniques. In "Dagneries" combine color, black and white and tinted frames.
The director resorts to a kind of “bombing” image: the actor’s scenes are montage interrupted by quickly changing on the screen photos, shots. The sound accompaniment of scenes often has nothing to do with what is happening: the heroines conduct a dialogue to the sounds of a clock, a typewriter, creaking. Khitilova later recalled: “During my work on ‘Dearpieces’ & #39, I realized that the language of images can express more than words.” This is what censorship could not anticipate when reading the script. I loved it then, and now I love everything wrong. I don’t like it when everyone is bureaucratic. I am for a review of everything.”
This strange work of Vera Khitilova came to the screens in 1966, just two years before the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, which for a long time did away with careless “daisies”. And full of sura and Dada ideas, the film certainly could not be removed in the era of the victorious socialist realism.
What's the story? “Dagneries” tells about two strange girls, either sisters, or friends (without dirty overtones), and both are called Mary. Girls have fun like teenage girls - endlessly eating, dancing, bred for money rustic men (but again no vulgarity in sexual terms, only the most common vulgar), conduct deliberately meaningless and empty conversations and look like two stunned dolls with an incredible amount of carcass in front of their eyes (hello, Twiggy). By themselves, translating into the language of psychiatry, they represent two capricious spoiled children, such a “child in a child”, tricksters, turning everything inside out and driving others to white heat. After all, in a world where a nuclear war could break out and nobody cares about each other, one should not behave well. You have to be bad! Like Paris Hilton (crossed out).
Such a position has something in common with Holden Caulfield, but unlike Holden, who is tormented by existential questions, they did not get their brains, so do not expect any moral throwing or philosophy. But there is a very, VERY many satire on the slogan “after us at least the flood” (the presence of allusions to the same crazy “golden twenties” a la Gatsby with crazy empty fun in the film for a reason). The problem is that the cups broken as a result of fun can no longer be glued together, and if you glue together, then some g turns out. But if you are one of those who is upset about the leaf of lettuce, then you should not worry, because this movie is just an illustration of your life. Including the current Russian life, where money defeated evil almost thirty years ago and will not stop. And if you think that this is just a drug addiction of the 60s, then I have to disappoint you - this movie is about infantility in principle. . .
In addition to a subtle and caustic message with an excellent ending, in my opinion (“after all, this story could end”), there are a lot of experiments, both visual and textual. If you are not embarrassed by cutting characters with scissors and transfusing frames with various colors like Andy Warhol, if you are amused and not shocked by a deliberately idiotic speech resembling either the “Bald Singer” by Eugene Ionesco, or sometimes the poems of oberouts, then this film is for you. If you're a fan of the Sixties, then even more so. But if you prefer a linear action without any additional meaning, then you are definitely not from the “generation of lettuce”. Sorry you're not bad enough.
I recommend this film not only to those for whom the problem is a broken nail (they find it difficult to look at themselves from the outside) and not only to lovers of art house and film experiments, but also to all those who have ever thought about people, that he is surrounded by and about the purpose in life. Is there something in it that can no longer be put together?
By the way, a separate plus for unusual music (rock and roll on a typewriter is powerful).
9 out of 10
Vera Khitilova’s daisies, with which I bothered to get acquainted, led to the idea of the completely swampy nature of the Prague Spring and the perfect creativity of its ideological inspirers.
And black magic with complete self-exposure.
This, if anyone has not seen, is a rather boring formalistic dullness, a collage of absurdistic adventures of two cheerful hyper-infantile laughers, incredibly stiff and monstrously overplaying. Fools symbolize either a new brainless generation, or those who hide their heads in the sand in the age of struggle, or someone else.
So to speak, experimental cinema, a breath of fresh air in the middle of totalitarian officialdom, full of allegory and became the personification of freedom, crushed a year later with the tail of the caterpillars of Soviet tanks. I guess that's it.
When you look at it, you get on the side of the caterpillars. The movie is painfully revealing. There was a lot of pressure.
Rebellion against the feast at the time of the plague
In a spoiled world, spoiled people. Two girls who suffer from everyday life decide to create an Epicurean holiday around them. They violate the most terrible prohibitions for children: play with food, joke on older people, crook, prevent adults from resting. And when there is a need to improve, the girls wrap themselves in newspapers, maximizing the effect of propaganda.
The film is very bright, emotional, modernist. Shot by Vera Khitilova in collaboration with artist and screenwriter Esther Krumbakhova, it is filled with collages, a frank prevalence of form over content. But what is the pampering of the two in comparison with the tragedy of the world? How to compare a trampled lettuce with a bomb destroyed high-rise building?
The picture still causes fierce debate: some admire it, others hate it. But I have not met people who would watch “Margarita”, and remained indifferent.
The representative of the Czech “new wave”, along with Milos Forman and Jiří Menzel, Vera Khitilova in 1966 created a truly innovative and original picture of “Dagnerite”, where she not only surpassed herself as a director and philosopher, but also used the technical capabilities of cinema with amazing freshness.
Saturated with images and metaphors, a surprisingly dynamic and eye-catching film raises questions of finding oneself and a place in this world, dissatisfaction with one’s life and the ultimate goal of the entire life path.
The two girls reasoned that if the world is spoiled, we will be spoiled. And so began their great odyssey of entertainment, pleasure, laughter and... gluttony. It is the latter that is the most vivid image of how people try to fill the void within themselves, formed due to the inability to find anything truly exciting. The leitmotif of the film is the forbidden fruits of the apple, with which the heroines indiscriminately fill their stomachs, but this does not lead them to satisfaction. Having got a chance to correct their mistakes, the heroines hopelessly try to connect the plates they have broken, remove the garbage left by them, but they naturally fail. Such a finale is easily projected on the regularity of the development of civilization, when people, without hesitation, destroy, and it is impossible to correct what was done later.
Daisies went down in history not only as a deep philosophical work with sarcastic nuances of narrative, but, first of all, as an innovative film. Fragmental editing, which gives the form a kind of aggressiveness, the absurdity of scenery and acting, the lack of a clear plot (Khitilova was repeatedly reproached for inability to “tell stories”) – all this made up a magnificent ensemble, thanks to which “Dagneries” became a landmark film in the development of the Czech “new wave” and greatly influenced world cinema.
Despite the motley reaction of critics to the picture, over time, no one left doubts about the importance of this tape for the formation of cinema: “The film was an obituary to the Czech cinema of the “fathers” with its wretched simplicity, constant fear of going beyond what is allowed, coldness and sentimentality.”
Uncompromising Vera Khitilova, who did not want to put up with reality, which did not satisfy her, invested all intellect and imagination in her work, finding in cinema a way for self-expression and knowledge of the world around her.
“I strive to understand this reality as fully as possible in order to correct it.” – Vera Khitilova
A review is more for those who have already looked than for those who do not know what it is about.
I am not familiar with the work of Vera Khitilova, so I do not know anything about the persecution or the prizes received. Therefore, my first impression of the picture was not shaded by any nuances. I am surprised by the lack of negative reviews.
Many have noticed that there is almost no plot in the picture. This is still half the trouble, there is no feminism, no Dada, no non-conformism, no anti-totalitarianism, but at least avant-gardeism. The picture must be beautiful. Excellent in its absurdity. The scissors scene only confirms what I said. Colored spots or cyclists on the road or just “metal” outfits heroines – all this is amazing if you consider the segments of the film separately. At the table, for example, is an illustration for the “Book of delicious and healthy food” ( “Johnie Walker!”). But overall... well, it doesn’t add up to anything really interesting.
I get it, 1966 and all that. At that time, perhaps, it was considered something, if not interesting, then different from everything else (although I could give examples of those years more interesting than the subject of discussion). But now the image of “margaritas” resembles the modern archetypal image of the wives of oligarchs – stupid blonde monkeys with a grenade. In general - fools (would be men, would say - morons). Stupid behavior, “games” with men, some even “sybarism” and a complete lack of desire to work and be useful, and a primitive desire to be “bad girls.” And this idiotic laughter of the main characters, in general, exasperated me throughout the viewing.
Of course, most likely, I did not see some "second layer" - subtext, an idea, an allusion, an allegory (it is, but is not too primitive?), which, judging by the positive reviews, the majority sees. Well, well, I will evaluate superficially: for beautiful girls +1, for beautiful Czech language +1, for individual scenes +1; for nudity with butterflies - 0; for everything else - minus. Women will find something special in this movie. But I would not watch again. "Should we save the spoiled?" Total
Bright Bohemian grenade at the base of the crown of the new Czechoslovak cinema shines "Margarettes" Vera Khitilova, Queen of the Safa New Wave, who stole the Ark of the Covenant.
Or, given the director’s mining background, Vera Khitilova’s “Margaritas” became the first weighty shovel of good Moravian coal into the furnace of the Czechoslovak cinematic revolution.
It seems to be the first avant-garde film that (I) wasn’t boring to watch. The nostalgic, unabashed freshness of the cinema of the sixties rushes at us from the screen (laptop) with a fervent hurricane. Editing concoctions, abused taboos, hooligan humor and, far without it - (not very) hidden socialist eroticism are the main features of the film, which can even be mistaken for "social satire, if you do not pay attention to the mockery of such an interpretation at the end of the film." This is when the heroines of the film Maria and Maria repeatedly repeat: "It's because we don't work" and themselves laugh at it. Insinuating, thereby, that they “did not teach their dialectics according to Hegel.”
Unlike the pompous and inexpressible depth of wisdom of most avant-garde creations, the author, through the mouth of his charming heroines, asks quite “Dostoev” questions. Moreover, girls do not so much reflect on the meaning of life, as, according to the recommendations of existentialists, behave accordingly: if the world is absurd and corrupt, we will behave absurdly and corruptly.
Behind the series of destructive experiments that the two Marys set in their fictional lives, there is always some inner questioning. Question (not a question!) about who we are and where we are going (I write so well that I myself wanted to review the film).
I'm not a big fan of spelling out symbols, but it's hard not to notice that (a) everything a girl touches is destroyed and the meaning of their life experiment can be expressed as follows: if everything is destroyed, what remains? and (b) they are cute. B may be more important than a.
Milota will save the world, in short.
10 out of 10
The film is not so much about the need for creative freedom and self-expression, and not so much about the role of women in society, but about insatiability, the inability to satisfy the need to entertain themselves. Marys, first of all, are children involved in a constant stream of entertainment, unable to live without the things that entertain them. It is no coincidence that the heroines are constantly passing through the lines: let’s go quickly to look for something new and interesting! After all, this is definitely a childish attitude: you are the center of the world, and everything around you is just for your pleasure.
Yes, daisies are cut from magazines, make collages and applications. If you consider them Dadaists, representatives of rebel art or other "demiurges" - Your right. The author of this review is not inclined to consider “margaritas” as artists, but saw, first of all, the image of idle, languishing from inability to occupy themselves, regretting the inability to continue the pleasure forever and wanting constant stimulation and new impressions of girls. This feeling of longing, scattered and slurred excitement is actually transmitted to the viewer.
Femininity of girls is rather potential, it is not mothers, but girls: both in behavior and in communication style. Well, it's clear: "new wave," Godard, spontaneity, liveliness, lightness, etc. Meaninglessness, in other words, which is perfectly shown in the dialogues about the existence, which can not be proved by anything, if not proved by the document. And if there are no fruits of labor, how do you even know that you exist?
In the final scene (of course, the film “The Big Food” comes to mind immediately, although it was shot later), the film simply explodes with gluttony, an incredible demonstration of greed in pleasing the flesh. Again, it seems that we are led to the idea of primitiveness, some archaic stage of development, in which there are daisies. This beautiful scene is a great merit of V. Khitilova.
Perhaps the content of the film is directed against socialism: both its inherent idea of the value of labor and the idea of subordinating the interests of the individual to society. However, both the grotesque and convex image of irresponsible and thirsty for entertainment girls, and the very ending of the film, coupled with the above, create a very strange effect. It may even seem that the Masks of the Red Death truth is drawn: death always catches up with those who try to escape it. And the farcical “repentance” and nauseating “cleaning” of the banquet table hint that “dreams” can not exist like this, and here they better not exist at all. But can they exist in other conditions, being not among those who are upset only because of trampled salad?
8 out of 10
Cinema that attracts attention, causes ecstasy and disgust - everything is on edge, everything is redundant, crazy and absurd, but - beautiful.
The story of two brunettes and blondes. Both Marys, both pretty damn good. Female images are deliberately puppet, which is emphasized by the sound accompaniment (squeaking and mechanical music in time for their movement). They are super-women in the sense of excess femininity in them, the embodiment of the unconscious, childish - a rather vile type. Femininity is emphasized by symbols scattered by a generous hand throughout the picture: apples - read: Eve, sin, temptation - a wreath (the wreath of the bride - innocence and freshness, new beginnings). After the First World War, it was a symbol of hope for rebirth. In the general consciousness - cheerfulness, celebration, fertility, prosperity, milk (on the breast) - motherhood, daisy - innocence and eternal love, Mary - the biblical name. The woman here is near-pagan, equal to herself, but at the same time always excessive or needy. Both the child and the demiurge.
The story is a satire of contemporary Czech writers, of attempts to revive the country that are failing like what happened in the last episode of the film (this is about the author’s external limitations), and of people who turn a blind eye and prefer to remain in blind and happy ignorance. Taking the main character of worthless infantile puppets, Khitilova causticly ridicules the absurdity that is happening in the real world. Behind the mad and inventive (frighteningly inventive) destruction of the world by the girls constantly absorbing and consuming reality around you can see confusion and loneliness, a sense of incorrectness and tragedy of what is happening. A mixture of fear for oneself and fear for all humanity. Anthem of anti-totalitarianism.
The film is full of motives of dying, death - Eros and Tonatos, holding hands, walking around the Czech Republic. Dead, pinned to pieces of paper, butterflies, fire, girl gluttony - what an extraordinary skill of shooting! The food is rotting right in the hands of the girls. Finally, the film-framed bomb blasts are harbingers of future storms. The film is full of symbols, striking images in the eyes, outrageous scenes, shocking, surreal humor. The infinite capacity of meanings and interpretations. A stream of consciousness. A sharp and precise blow. Tragifars. The ride. It is impossible to break away.
No less, and for some, the technical side is interesting. The director uses an incredibly bold set of artistic means, creating his own unique film language. The basis of everything is a collage, which refers to the well-known Dadaists, whose spirit, of course, inspired the brilliant Czech. Aggressive fractional (including intraframe) editing, destroying the harmony of the film, literally cutting the frame and human figures inside it with scissors. In this case, everything seems logical. Deconstructed content requires the destruction of form. All logical, visual, aesthetic canons and connections are destroyed, and at the same time the aesthetics of form are perfected. An Impressionist Journey to an Alien World.
The other side of the visual component of the film is the color game. The image rhythmically jumps from color to black and white, suddenly dyed in contrasting colors. At a certain point becomes mute, repeating the aesthetics of the cinema of the 20s, then suddenly - makes you remember Godard and the French new wave, sometimes - about Buñuel.
I was especially impressed by the image of water in the film - it shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow, envelops the screen, resembling oil stains, then paintings of the Impressionists. This striking ambivalence once again underlines the ideological component of the film about a world where brilliant and great art is mixed with danger and destruction.
Amazing style - where one does not correspond to the other, the sound to the image, and the theme - the manner of execution. A philosophical parable in the format of phantasmagoria, caustic sarcasm, grotesque and striking omnivorous frame.
The film is unique for its time, like a dream, a psychedelic trip or an endless video clip. The aesthetics of "Margaritas" are read in the Baroque of Greenway, and in the underground of Igor Voloshin.
A manifesto of uncompromisingness, executed with an exhilarating sense of time, creative intelligence and imagination.
8 out of 10
This film is considered by many to be one of the most iconic for the Czech New Wave. But in my opinion, the picture is much more passable compared to the early works of Milos Forman or Martyrs of Love by Jan Nemetz.
The plot is simple: two young girls are aware of themselves. “Who told you we were?” is what comes to mind. They do not work anywhere and deny the rules established in society. In fact, they arrange in the Czech Republic what a few years later Milos Forman will arrange in the “Gap”.
Many viewers may have complaints that the plot, as such, is absent at all. Now, of course, such a picture would most likely pass unnoticed. But, after all, we are talking about the 60s, the time is very interesting and ambiguous.
Vera Khitilova shoots a typical movie of the Czech “new wave”, focusing on the rebellious relationship between the two girls, with the rest of society. I would like to highlight some very interesting visual decisions of the director.