David Hudson: Věra Chytilová, 1929 – 2014 Best known for Daisies (1966), Chytilová was a major figure in Czech cinema.

Věra Chytilová, 1929 – 2014
Best known for DAISIES (1966), Chytilová was a major figure in Czech cinema.

by David Hudson Keyframe

“The director and screenwriter Věra Chytilová, the first lady of Czech film, died today in Prague at the age of 85,” reports the Prague Post. “As a filmmaker, Chytilová already made news with her student films, Ceiling (Strop, 1961) and A Bagful of Fleas (Pytel blech, 1962), but it was her provocative 1966 film Daisies (Sedmikrásky) that made her a household name in then-Czechoslovakia, even at the height of the otherwise male-dominated Czech New Wave that included such luminary figures as Miloš Forman and Jiří Menzel.”

“She was unique in the history of Czech cinema as a high-profile director during the New Wave, Normalization, and post-Communism periods who did not pursue a filmmaking career outside the country,” notes Kevin McFarland at the AV Club. “Chytilová didn’t simply represent a female presence in a male-dominated cinematic movement; she stood out as the most vocally political and aesthetically experimental filmmaker of the bunch.”

The AP notes that Daisies “proved her reputation as a provocateur and helped establish her as an artistic force at home and abroad. Like the movies of other new Czech directors of the time, it represented a radical departure from socialist realism, a typical communist-era genre focusing on realistically depicting the working class’ troubles. The heroes of Daisies—two teenage girls—decide to get spoiled because the entire world is spoiled, and they want to have some fun. It was immediately banned before winning the Grand Prix at the Bergamo Film Festival in Italy in 1967…. Of her 20 feature movies, her major works include Fruit of Paradise, Calamity, Panelstory, The Very Late Afternoon of the Faun and The Inheritance.”

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