Eastern Europe: my, what large film vaults you have. A singular treat of film restoration is Criterion-Eclipse-Janus Film’s gorgeous new 35mm print of “Daisies” (Sedmikrásky), Vera Chytilová’s aggressive, over-the-top, under-the-radar 1966 Czech New Wave, surreal, sexy, socialist pre-Prague Spring daydream: artful anarchy rules with bonus “mod” pop-art eyeball-kick fashion. Two collage-mad, scissors-happy teenage sisters, Jarmilla and Julie, set out to redeem the world from having been “spoiled,” and feminist theory may never have been so consummately crafted as entertainment: hello, Dada. (In “The Story of Film,” Mark Cousins compares one passage to “the Lumière Brothers on acid.”) Free-and-easy shifts in color, tint and tone announce themselves from the first minutes and do not let up. Chytilová, now eighty-three, has made other films, but what a full-to-bursting free-for-all “Daisies” is. 76m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
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