Daisies

Daisies was easily the strangest movie I have ever watched in my entire life.  I'm not sure how I really feel about avant-garde film now that I've seen it but maybe I just need to give it a second shot with a movie that doesn't churn my stomach like this one.  For me personally, the only redeeming factor of this film was the humor.  Comparing it visually to Looney-tunes (minus the odd coloring effects and strange montage shots) would be a fairly accurate parallel.  The way that Chytilova used sound to emphasize the girls' movements adds an element of humor to the film unlike any I've seen in something that wasn't animated. One example of this is when the lighter haired Marie tied her knees together and started --for lack of a better term-- waddling around the girls' room.  They amplified the sound her feet were making in order to really draw it to your attention and make the whole gimmick a little bit more comical. I don't really think that you can accurately analyze the visual strategy of this film --not the humorous aspect at least-- without also including something about the sounds that are going on during the scenes.  Another example of this is the very first scene when the girls seemed to creak like rusty metal whenever they would move around.







Without the visual humor working along with the sounds the way clearly illustrated in the clip above, this film wouldn't have been as strange or as politically devious as it was.  I have the feeling that Chytilova wanted to make this movie as odd and as abrasive as she possibly could, both visually and by sound.