1966 / Daisies – The food orgy.
Czechoslovakia (Ceskoslovenský Státní Film/Filmové Studio Barrandov). Director: Vera Chytilová. Cast: Jitka Cerhová, Ivana Karbanová. Original title: Sedmikrasky.
Why It’s Key: The climactic shock in this avant-garde farce is connected to food, not sex.
In an avant-garde feminist farce full of giggles and outrages, the ultimate jolt, which reportedly got its director into the most trouble, is an extravagant food orgy. Prior to this, the countless antics of two 17-year-old girls, both named Marie, nearly all involve food and/or drink, some of it served in posh restaurants, as well as the promise of sexual favors to dirty old men that are never delivered. Sometimes the transgressions are mainly formal; sometimes they involve both food and sex, such as when phallic bananas are compulsively sliced.
Eventually, the heroines’ plotless wanderings bring them via a dumbwaiter to a huge banquet hall filled with delicacies. After tentatively sampling a few dishes, they start sinking their hands into the sauces, devouring chickens, swilling diverse kinds of liquor, mixing together different dishes, gorging on pastries, and finally engaging in a food fight worthy of Laurel and Hardy —- much of this done to the strains of the Austrian national anthem. Then they start dancing on the table, swinging from an ornate chandelier, and smashing plates and glasses. Finally, to make matters even worse, they pretend to clean up the carnage —-reassembling plates like jigsaw puzzles and scraping food off the floor to heap it back onto trays.
Indignant Czech citizens who decried the waste and self-indulgence were only rising to the bait. The film ends with newsreel shots of aerial bombardment, over which a title appears: “This film is dedicated to those whose only reason for outrage is mutilated lettuce.”
I am not so interested in the various ways billions of others receive their pleasures from for example food or sex. I am somewhat disgusted by the staggering amount of time and effort that is now being spent in communicating these pleasures to each other. To each their own delights, so that we leave communications free to deal with more crucial matters.
