Word: films
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...CZECH films have been in vogue for several years now, for a variety of stylish reasons. (Political capital is surely a featured consideration; American critics have a habit of translating the Czech's frequent portrayal of stolid bureaucracy--intended as neutral moral backgroun to more intimate drama--as veiled protest against socialist rule). Most Czech films share an "unstylish", descriptive approach to reality, attempting to cast social themes in individualized dimensions (Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel). But a few filmmakers have made a radical break with previous Czech film, abandoning descriptive conventions for vivid stylization and a strong strain of philosophical...
Daisies is a chronicle of the adventure of two young girls, both named Mary. Deciding, "if everything's spoiled, we'll be spoiled too," they set out to engorge the world, sponging lavish meals off of older men, then tricking their benefactors onto departing trains. Much of the film documents the Marys' coming and going between expensive restaurants and expensive ladies rooms. But they become bored with being successful parasites; they lie, they steal, seeking new excitement, "a worse kind of life." Finally they stumble upon an unattended banquet, which they utterly destroy. Here the film stops; they are seen...
CHYTILOVA conveys this fractionalism not through camera movement or frame composition, but rather through decor and the plastic material itself. The film skips from color to black and white, to harsh grain, loud color tones, and a wide variety of tints, often making several changes within a shot. Their apartment, the creation of Krunbachova, is a patchwork of high fashion, pop art, and fin de siecle decorativism, defining their character with hundreds of faces clipped from magazine advertisements. Chytilova has further employed various complex animation techniques and frequent single framing to stress the discontinousness of her subjects experience...
These splintered existences, defined both by the processing and their apartment, are compared in one scene to that of a Czech farmer. He is seen in long shot (one of the film's few long shots) surrounded by his home, his field, and his dog, at one with the environment. (In contrast, the few long shots of the Marys are always chosen to emphasize the unreality of their lives; for instances, one shot is of Mary standing in the middle of a field by a tree full of obviously plastic fruit). Hopelessly fragmented, the Marys cannot relate to a whole...
...China; for Alan Ladd, read Gregory Peck. The Chairman is a basket of bromides-except for one original line that ought to be anthologized. The chemist who developed the soil enricher murmurs to Hathaway: "We are none of us free. We are all chained to an enzyme." During the filming of The Chairman in Hong Kong, Communist Chinese newspapers warned the cast of "various serious consequences'"-the film, obviously-and angry mobs burned Peck in effigy. They got the wrong...