---
title: "Daisies"
year: 1966
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/daisies"
fi1m_id: "daisies"
imdb_id: "tt0060959"
tmdb_id: 46919
wikidata_id: "Q910705"
fi1m_score: 85
critics_score: 90
critics_reviews: 5
published: "2026-09-26T16:08:21.701822+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-26T16:08:37.579922+00:00"
region: "BG"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Daisies (1966)

Directed by Věra Chytilová · 1h 16m · Comedy, Drama

## Identity

Daisies

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/daisies
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** daisies
- **IMDb ID:** tt0060959
- **TMDB ID:** 46919
- **Wikidata ID:** Q910705
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060959/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/46919, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q910705

**Fi1m score: 85** · Critics 90 (early) from 5 reviews

*In a sentence:* Two girls called Marie decide to be as spoilt as the world, and mostly this means lunch

> Věra Chytilová’s 1966 comedy about two young women who decide to be as spoilt as the world around them is 76 minutes of colour filters, scissors and enormous meals. It repeats itself and does not care; by the end, neither did we.

## Synopsis

Prague in the mid-1960s. Two young women, both called Marie (Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová), sit in bikinis on a wooden deck, their limbs creaking like hinges, and agree that since the world has gone bad, they will be bad too. Their method is dinner. One Marie lets an Elderly Gentleman (Julius Albert) take her to a restaurant; the other turns up uninvited and orders half the menu, and afterwards the pair walk him to the station and wave him onto a train. They repeat the trick, visit a Young Gentleman (Jan Klusák) who collects butterflies and wants to marry one of them, heckle a nightclub floor show, and go home to a flat that is filling up with what they have not finished eating. Nobody understands them. They are not sure they mind.

## Review

*Daisies* opens on a machine, a rusted wheel turning, intercut with aerial footage of bombs falling on a city. Then two girls in bikinis sit on a wooden deck, their arms creaking like an unoiled door, and agree that since everything in the world is going bad, they will go bad too. That is the premise of Věra Chytilová’s film, written with Ester Krumbachová from a story by Chytilová and Pavel Juráček, and she gets 76 minutes out of it without adding a plot. The two Maries want nothing but the next meal and the next man to pay for it.

We think it is one of the few films of its period that has kept all its nerve. Most critics rate it higher than we do, and our reservation is simple: it is a single joke told a dozen ways, and some of the ways are better than others. The good ones are good enough to carry the rest, and the film has the sense to be short.

Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová play the two Maries, and neither of them acts in any ordinary sense. They squeal, pose, kick their legs in the air and speak in slogans. The routine they run on men is the film’s best gag. An Elderly Gentleman (Julius Albert) takes one Marie to a restaurant; the other arrives uninvited and orders everything she can see, and the two of them eat while he watches his money go. Then they walk him to the station and wave him onto a train with such sincerity that he believes it. We laughed hardest at the waving, and kept laughing each time it came round.

Jaroslav Kučera shoots almost every scene in a different colour. The film is in full colour, then black and white, then tinted red or blue or sepia, sometimes switching within a single shot, and Miroslav Hájek’s cutting refuses to smooth any of it over. There is a scene in the girls’ flat we will not describe, in which the game turns on the two of them, and it is the one moment the film stopped being funny for us and became alarming. Chytilová holds it long enough for that to land, then cuts.

Jiří Šust and Jiří Šlitr’s music is brass and oom-pah and scraps of dance tune, undercut throughout by the sound effects: the hinge creak of the girls’ limbs, a train whistle. Krumbachová, designing the costumes, dresses the Maries like dolls someone has been careless with, short shifts and stockings and flower crowns, then puts them in evening gowns for a nightclub they cannot behave in. Karel Lier’s flat fills with the leavings of what they have eaten. Nobody clears up. Jan Klusák’s Young Gentleman, a butterfly collector who declares his love to a Marie hiding behind two of his glass cases, gets the film’s one tender scene, and then the same treatment as everybody else.

The faults are real. The men are props, and after the third has been put on a train the routine has said what it has to say. The nightclub sequence, in which the girls heckle a dancing couple, runs past the point where we were enjoying their rudeness; we found ourselves checking how much was left, which in a 76-minute film is not a good sign. And the politics are asserted rather than shown. The bombs at the start tell us that the girls’ appetite has something to do with a world that wastes people; the film never quite draws the line itself.

Among the films of the Czechoslovak new wave, *Daisies* is the wildest, more a collage than a story. It is sharper than the later films about two girls against the world because it does not like its heroines any more than it likes their victims. It watches them the way they watch a plate of cakes.

Do not eat beforehand. The food in it looks lovely or disgusting depending on the tinting, and by the end you will not be sure which. There is no BBFC certificate on record. We would show it to a teenager with an argumentative streak, and then put the scissors somewhere high.

*Fi1m score 85, published 26 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is Daisies worth watching?**

*Daisies* is worth watching for anyone who can take 76 minutes of colour filters, slogans and two girls eating other people's dinners, and we scored it 85. It is a single joke told a dozen ways, and the nightclub sequence outstays its welcome, but the best of it, the routine the Maries run on men, made us laugh every time it came round. Do not eat beforehand.

**How long is Daisies, and what is it rated?**

*Daisies* runs 1h 16m. It is a comedy and drama film.

**Where can I watch Daisies in Bulgaria?**

*Daisies* is not on any streaming or rental service in Bulgaria at the moment. It is available in 2 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

### Reviews we read (5)

- **Time Out**, David Fear (5/5): Fear presents the film as an anarchistic, acid-trippy call to arms, celebrating its radical absurdism. The description singles out its playful reworking of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and its exuberant spirit. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/daisies)
- **Sight and Sound**, Dorota Lech (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a provocative, timeless work of subversion. They praise its surrealist energy and the way it turns everyday subjects into ammunition for its protagonists’ pranks. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/80a5e60b-c976-5295-aa1b-7b644fda904a/daisies)
- **Slant Magazine**, Ela Bittencourt (4.5/5): Bittencourt praises Chytilová’s radical, exuberant film and finds its playful subversion compelling. She also singles out Criterion’s vivid 4K restoration and substantial contextual extras for praise. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/daisies-blu-ray-review-vera-chytilova/)
- **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (90/100, inferred): Brody regards the film as a great burst of cinematic invention and sees imagination as its revolutionary subject. He singles out Chytilová’s exuberant, freewheeling filmmaking and its audacious challenge to authority. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/dvd-of-the-week-daisies)
- **The Guardian**, Phelim O'Neill (80/100, inferred): O’Neill presents the film as a sweet, silly and radical classic. He praises its inventive mix of animation, music, stock footage and slapstick. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/may/30/new-dvd-releases-daisies-czech)

## Details

- **Director:** Věra Chytilová
- **Director:** Věra Chytilová
- **Screenplay:** Věra Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová
- **Story:** Pavel Juráček, Věra Chytilová
- **Cinematography:** Jaroslav Kučera
- **Editor:** Miroslav Hájek
- **Music:** Jiří Šust, Jiří Šlitr
- **Production design:** Karel Lier
- **Costume design:** Ester Krumbachová
- **Cast:** Jitka Cerhová as Marie I; Ivana Karbanová as Marie II; Helena Anýžová as Woman in toilet; Julius Albert as Elderly Gentleman; Jan Klusák as Young Gentleman; Jiřina Myšková; Oldřich Hora; Marcela Březinová as Toilet Keeper
- **Runtime:** 1h 16m
- **First release (XC):** 30 December 1966
- **Genres:** Comedy, Drama
- **Box office:** $13,692
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vBGo95SJz4

## Where to watch in Bulgaria

Not streaming, renting or buying in Bulgaria at the last check.

Also available in: FR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Céline and Julie Go Boating* (1974): Two women, one game, three hours; Rivette’s Paris runs on the same mischief.
- *Valerie and Her Week of Wonders* (1970): The Czechoslovak new wave gone gothic, all lace, vampires and dreamy colour.
- *Funeral Parade of Roses* (1969): Tokyo’s underground cut up with the same scissors and even less respect.
- *Zazie dans le Métro* (1960): A small girl loose in Paris, and Malle lets the film misbehave with her.
- *Spring Breakers* (2012): Four girls, neon filters and appetite without conscience; the closest America has come.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/daisies