A Contextual Research Essay investigating the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement
For my contextual studies essay, I will be exploring Czechoslovakian new wave cinema and the obscure ways in which the films are constructed while reflecting the society of the time. Through my research, I will also be looking at the impact that the society and political state had on the movement and Czechoslovakian cinema in general.
The three Czechoslovakian new wave texts that I have chosen to focus on particularly are: Daisies (1966), The Firemen's Ball (1967) and Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970). I have chosen these texts because I think that they are some of the most interesting and obscure texts of the Czech new wave movement.
Czechoslovakia in the 1940s was suffering the impact and aftermath of the second world war, meaning that there was a sudden influx in films being produced - although the control of the Soviet Union over the Czech government meant that all media content had to through public censorship checks before they could be fully released. During this time the Czech approach to society and creativity was forced to disappear and was replaced by the soviet cultural policies of the SU, however, in the following years Czechoslovakia started to gain recognition and the Czech film industry was given its first Academy Award (for A Shop on Main Street (1965) directed by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos). (HAMES, 2005)
Surrealism was a great influence to how the Czech film makers encoded, directed and produced their films. (OWENS, 2011) Due to the creative restriction laws in place (public censorship act) which lasted all the way through till the 1980s, a great deal of films that where created during this time were banned or restricted from being released before the film became readily available to the general public. Although, due to public demand, there was a slight relaxation on the law during the 1950’s to mid way through the 1960’s, there was still a great deal of film texts that were prohibited from being shown due to the openly “protesting Communist authoritarianism” (www.anothermag.com).
The 1966 new wave film Daisies, directed by Vera Chytilova, is a very obscure and controversial film in its portrayal of women who perform destructive pranks on society because they believe the world has gone rotten and so have they. This film text is known to be one of the most iconic films of the New Wave movement, presenting a very feministic view on the world accompanied with its overall negative view on society (specifically the communist society that was around in Czechoslovakia at the time. Due to the controversial nature of the text - openly slandering and speaking out against the Soviet Union and the communist/controlling reign of the state and country - it was immediately banned by the Czechoslovakian government.
The narrative of the film has been encoded with various creative and almost hypnotic or confusing types of editing, the most frequent of these being overlaying black and white clips of film with reds, blues and occasionally even a rainbow assortment of colour - giving a striking and almost childish/circus feel to the text. These outcomes were often due to the experimentation that the films editor - Miroslav Hajek - did on the reels of footage and occasionally the colours/editing effects weren't intended but they decided to keep them in the finished film as they ended up looking creative and interesting when spliced together during production.
A particular scene in Daisies that shows how creative and obscure the editing in Czech New Wave films was, occurs towards the end of the film text when the two girls have accepted the fact that they, like the world, have become spoilt. The diegetic sound used throughout the scene - various trumpets used in an almost jazz type manner, making disjointed notes that do not flow together - is very distorted and escalates in speed as the clip progresses and the girls begin to “cut each other up”. This choice in music reflects the way Marie and Marie feel as the though the world has gone sour and is no longer beautiful or harmonious. In addition, it gives off the air of something that no longer makes sense - further tying into the idea that the two girls no longer understand their place in the world and cannot make sense of it other than to know it has become rotten/bad. The scene opens with the Marie I and Marie II in their apartment building, one laying down and the other cutting up the fabric of the mattress the first is laying on (moving on to aggravate her into a “play fight” as she cuts away part of the shirt the first Marie is wearing). After this brief entrance to the scene, the editing starts to become less natural and more striking and experimental. Accompanied with the added foley sound of the scissors snipping, the girls body parts become detached and appear in different areas of the screen to the rest of their body/the part thats intact. The cutting each other up escalates through to the end of the scene where they start chasing each other around the small apartment, the view becoming distorted and pieces of the collective camera view are shown as though they have been cut into tiny pieces with scissors and attempted to be placed back together. The key theme that can be seen throughout this scene is cutting and distortion - shown to the audience in a variety of different ways through the editing of the scene - linking to the main idea which powers the girls impulsive actions and also acting as a clear representation of the dissociation and way that the two Marie have cut away themselves from society and the rotten, corrupted and cut apart/destroyed world.
As well as the obscure, creative editing techniques used throughout the text, the actual narrative of the text speaks about two girls trying to understand the reason for their lives by destroying and upsetting the world around them in a series of societally destructive pranks. The majority of scenes throughout the film text are of the two girls (Marie and Marie) dinning out with different older male characters and then leaving them at the train station - essentially taking advantage of the mens kindness and desires to be married to a younger woman. The overall meaning of the film (“‘This film is dedicated to those who get upset only over a stomped-upon bed of lettuce,’ reminding us that rather than spend our time worrying about social transgressions we should instead be protesting Communist authoritarianism. While we might not be enduring the same oppression as 60s Czechoslovakia, Daisies' message is still relevant in modern times – we should pick our battles, focus on the things that matter and refuse to concede to arbitrary conventions; a lesson as relevant in 2015 as it ever was.“(www.anothermag.com)) and plot line, much like other New Wave film texts, is quite hard to gauge as there is essentially no exposition in the film - the New Wave movement was one in which directors treated their audience as people who understood common sense in narrative (a man walking out of his apartment door and leaves the building would have been shown via a man going through the door and then outside the building rather than the ‘formulaic Hollywood’ way of showing which would have shown the entire journey the man had to get outside of his apartment building) and could decode the general meaning of the film - and lead to many audience members being confused by the film text but understanding that there was some kind of ‘moral message’ behind it.
Valerie and her Week of Wonders, directed by Jaromil Jires and released in 1970, is a very highly influenced surrealism text with a narrative about a young girl who escapes from reality in uncomfortably erotic dreams/fantasies. This film, unlike Daisies, is a striking and vivid example of how the surrealist movement or surrealism in general affected and influenced the Czechoslovakian New Wave. Despite Jires’s previous work, The Joke, being banned the production and release of Valerie and her Week of Wonders was fairly seamless as it fit simply into the horror genre.
The editing types and objects/settings encoded in this film are very reflective of the sudden creative freedom that the directors and artists in Czechoslovakia had been given, along with the brief abolishment of the Public Censorship law in 1940s (HAMES, 2005). The very concept and narrative of the film - containing various uncomfortable and disturbing erotic fantasies - showcases just how extremely obscure Czechoslovakian film texts became due to their new freedom of speech and public displays. A great deal of the editing used in the scenes/colour pallets and encoding in the mise-en-scene creates a very pure angelic look when showing Valerie. The opening sequence of the film, lasting 2 minutes 26 seconds, has a large amount of artificial lens flare used after each short clip. This matches the aim of New Wave films because it breaks the conventions of mainstream texts of the day (especially Hollywood film texts) as it is a more obvious and possibly unaesthetically pleasing form of editing. The editing and overall appearance of the film creates a great deal of contrast in itself due to its very ambient and bright/aesthetic form compared to the dark and almost sexual horror that the narrative of the film conveys.
A scene which shows the colour pallets and colour connotation use in Valerie and her Week of Wonders is when Eaglet has just saved her from the Constable (dressed as the Head Missionary) and they then watch him interact with the grandmother in the courtyard. There is a large amount of colour connotation in this scene, in a way presenting to the audience how Valerie feels about each character in it - For example: when the camera shows Eaglet holding Valerie and keeping her out of sight the colours are generally very warm and it appears (as the audience knows) to be daylight, however when the camera shows the activity happening in the square/Valerie’s Grandmother and the Reverend the colours used are a great deal more dark and dreary (in tones of dark blue, black and grey) and in a way that makes the scene look like it was shot at night or the late hours of the afternoon. In addition to the interesting and contrasting use of colour, this scene also contains a great deal of cut-ins and mismatched reaction shots whereas in most other New Wave texts (Czechoslovakian or otherwise) jump cuts tend to be used along with colour overlays instead of more “Formulaic Hollywood” techniques like cut-ins or cut-aways. The mismatched/ unaligned reaction shot do, however, link to the idea that New Wave directors tended to include mistakes in their film texts due to them generally not having enough money to correct it or re-film it.
The narrative of Valerie and her Week of Wonders is very heavily structured on surrealism and sexual horror, making clear parallels to the original book which inspired and influenced the film text. In addition to the use of lens flares and angelic music (which contrasts the overall plot line of the film text), the narrative of Valerie and her Week of Wonders is about a young girl who starts her period and begins to have dreams of a fanciful world of vampires and murder, whilst a whole new world of mystery and wonder is opened up to her. Unlike Daisies, where audience member came away with varying but somewhat similar interpretations of the text, Jaromil Jires’s film leaves many audience members with a very confused diverse range of interpretations of what the film means - the only clear reading of the it being that the story is of a girl becoming a woman.
The 1967 film The Firemen’s Ball, directed by Milos Forman, is one of the few Czechoslovakian New Wave films (if not, one of the only films ever) that was banned “’permanently and forever’ by the Communist regime” when it was released to the general public (www.rogerebert.com). In contrast the other two film texts that I have studied, The Firemen’s Ball is a comedy which contains outward and obvious slander within its narrative that the structure of society (at the time) is corrupt and run by misogynistic older males - who in this case use their power to parade the “selected women” in front of their table - and about communism and the communist authority in general.
The encoded types of editing throughout this film are more reflective and tightly fitted with the original New Wave editing techniques, being mainly reliant on jump cuts to make the audience aware that they are watching a film. Where the other film texts use more obscure and creative editing types such as multiple colour overlays at one to create a rainbow effect (Daisies) and lens flares with overly bright and angelic colour schemes (Valerie and her Week of Wonders), Forman chose to keep the overall appearance of the film relatively “normal” and more like a typical Hollywood/mainstream film.
A scene which presents the controversial nature of the text the most vividly is the scene where one of the women is asked to remove her clothes in front of the room of Firemen/Officers and 7 other women who’ve been selected for the Miss Fire-Department position. There is very little editing used in this scene - making it appear visually much more like a Hollywood film text rather than one from the New Wave movement-, however, there are a few jump cuts (in amongst shot reverse shots) encoded while the woman is undressing. Unlike in Valerie and her Week of Wonders, the shot reverse shots match up with what the eye(s) are looking at making the film seem a little less disjointed and giving it a more refined overall appearance. The fact that the films narrative is easily understandable and flows fairly seamlessly (with the exception of the jump cuts added in to make the audience aware that they are watching a film/create dissociation) makes it appear a great deal more like a Hollywood or even “formulaic Hollywood” film than any of the other New Wave texts the I have looked at or studied. There is, however, evidence in the scene of mistakes being included in the final product, namely the girls at the back trying to refrain themselves from laughing at something. This “mistake” is, however, hardly noticeable - meaning that it appears less as a mistake and more as a subtle part of the scene that could have been cut out by one of the jump cuts that appear just before it.
In terms of narrative, The Firemen’s Ball is a relatively easy text to decode - the senior Officer of the fire department has chosen to retire and to commemorate/celebrate a ball is held in his honour with lottery prizes and his choice of woman as the Miss Fire-Department’s beauty contest. The meaning behind this film was simply to outline to the audience the communist world in which they lived was not sustainable or good. “The idea of relaxing and abandoning oneself to leisure – what Forman refers to as “fun” – in communist Czechoslovakia, in 1967, is essentially a tragic-comic contradiction, the true import and meaning of which will escape many viewers today. ‘Fun in communist Czechoslovakia’ is an oxymoron that Forman needed to recognise publicly.” (ww.sensesofcinema.com).
In conclusion, my research has shown that the main impact and core value of the Czechoslovakian New Wave movement was to express the Czech directors distaste of the communist society that they lived through (under the rule of the Soviet Union) and enlighten the audience as to how bad it was and the real negative effects that it had on society and their lives/people in general.
