Pinky Rose (played by Sissy Spacek) idolizes Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) with whom she works. This adoration borders on a slight obsession. This "light obsession" turns into something darker and more disturbing when Millie proposes Pinky to be her flatmate. The relationship between two women grows more intense and strange. Pinky, naive and confused, stares at Millie, who in her eyes is the ideal of a young woman. Meanwhile, Millie creates her character on the model of models promoted within popular culture.
We are introduced to another woman - the mysterious pregnant Willie, who spends her days on painting. Each of these women represents three different personalities of one person. This film is a portrait of an American woman against the backdrop of social and moral changes at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. Director Robert Altman admitted that he was inspired by his dreams to create it.
At the beginning of the film, three women represent the stereotypical roles women play in society. Pinky is innocent, childish and shy at the beginning of the film, her character is yet to be formed, then there is Millie, who looks and tries to act like a modern woman that takes inspiration from colorful magazines, shares recipes and is also sexually liberated, but there is something about her that makes others avoid her and the only person who wants to spend time with her is Pinky, she is actually very lonely. Willie is presented as the mother, a more mature, wise woman, and together with her husband Edgar, she co-owns a bar where Millie and Pinky spend a lot of their time.
The element of water appears very often in the film. Altman said the opening shot represents the amniotic fluid surrounding a fetus. Willie paints her macabre creatures at the bottom of the pool.
Millie and Pinky's relationship becomes more and more complicated, causing Pinky to attempt suicide and jump into the pool, losing consciousness by the force of the impact. After this event, the psyche of the protagonists completely changes. Pinky wakes up in the hospital as a completely different person, she does not recognize people who say that they are her parents, and orders everyone to call her Milgred ( the name she shares with Millie). From that moment on, the dynamics between them shifted by 180 degrees. When the women come home from the hospital, Pinky starts copying Millie and her behaviors, such as drinking, smoking, but also sleeping with Edgar. The style in which she dresses also changes dramatically.
Millie, on the other hand, does not understand this whole new situation, it scares her, and so she begins to turn into Pinky from before the accident, less confident and more timid.
One night, Pinky has a nightmare so she and Milie share a bed. Suddenly, drunk Edgar bursts into the apartment and announces that Willie is giving birth. Two women went to help her, unfortunately the baby is stillborn, because Pinky did not call for help, which Millie told her to do.
After all this we see two women working in the tavern previously run by Edgar and Willie. They returned to their dynamics from the beginning of the movie, however, Millie's behavior is now more like Willie's, Pinky calls her "mother". We also learn that Edgar died from a 'gun accident', but the film makes us understand that the women were most likely responsible for his death.
Altman admits that he himself does not know the answers to many of the questions that come to mind while watching his film, because many things are a mystery to him. As I mentioned before, he based on a dream he had.
The heroes he created are extremely authentic. Altman is known for analyzing falsified ideas and apparent patterns functioning in the society around him. The style of this avant-garde film is symbolic. It can be read in many ways, such as the complexity of female nature or a reflection on human confusion. “3 Women” is very complex and extraordinary.
This masterpiece created by Wojciech Jerzy Has was ranked as the fifth best Polish film by Museum of Cinemarography in Łódź.
However, I believe that in order to understand it better, one must first learn more about Bruno Schulz, because it was based on the stories which he wrote.
Bruno Schulz was born to a Polish-Jewish family in 1892 in Drohobych (present Ukraine). He was a writer, illustrator, painter and a graphic artist. However, he is less known for his art and more for his amazing surreal dream-like short stories. The main character is usually a man called Józef, who is the author's alter ego. The events which he describes are reminiscent of childhood memories distorted by time. Actual events are mixed with the exuberant children's imagination, they resemble more of an illogical dream. Schulz's stories are almost like his diaries, they contain his memories of his family life, but also of Poland's pre-war Shtelt's. Unfortunately he did not leave behind numerous literary works.
Ultimately his life ends very sadly. when Nazi Germany took over Drohobych in 1941, Shulz was sent to the Jewish ghetto, but a certain Nazi officer Felix Landau admired his work so he took him under his protection in exchange for painting a mural. After finishing work in 1942, when Schulz was returning home with a loaf of bread, he was shot and killed by another Gestapo officer, who did so in revenge because Landau shot his "Personal Jew".
For a better understanding of :The Hourglass Sanatorium" it is worth getting to know Schulz's biography.
When he finished the volume in 1937, the author did not know yet what was about to come two year later. On the other hand, Wojciech Jerzy Has became a witness of these events and was unable to create a film based on Schulz without referring to the tragedy of the Holocaust.
Wojciech Jerzy Has was born in Kraków, where he graduated, among others, from the academy of fine arts whose influence in his films is very visible. Each film frame looks like a painting. He has a very unique visual style, it resembles poetry on the screen. Most of his films were based on literature, another of his most popular works are "The Saragossa Manuscript" and " The doll".
It took him five years to create the hourglass sanatorium.
Despite the prohibition of the authorities at the time, the film was secretly sent to the Cannes Film Festival, thanks to false inscriptions on the film cans. Because of this, as a punishment, Has had to wait 8 years for another possibility to create a film.
Set design resembles the splendor of a baroque cathedral as well as a theatre. Has focused on conveying the surreal atmosphere and shape of the novel. Interwoven dimensions, different times make the viewer feel dizzy. Their arrangement, or rather disorder, resembles cubism.
The main protagonist, Józef, arrives at the seemingly abandoned sanatorium to visit his father, who, as it turns out later, died a few years earlier. It turns out that his father is still alive, but he is staying in a different dimension of time. Józef begins to travel through many loops of past time that focus on his childhood years and his memories and dreams. The fantasy land of his childhood comes back to life.
Despite the fact that Józef has the appearance of an adult man, he himself behaves like a child and is treated ilike one by the figures around him.
The obsession with time in this film may indicate that it is one of the main characters. The spectator is surrounded by a sense of passing time, memories, and death.
This is one of those movies that change you after watching it. I will never forget that feeling when I saw it for the first time. "The Hourglass Sanatorium" forces the spectator to reflect on their existence.
Becoming a woman in "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders"
This is defitely one of my favourite films. "Valerie a týden divu" from 1970 is a surreal masterpiece. It is a fantasy horror from Czechoslovakia directed by Jaromil Jireš. This film together with Chytilova's daisies made me fall in love with the Czech New Wave. Interestingly, the original screenplay was written by Ester Krumbachova, who also worked on Daisies, but eventually Jires made some corrections to it. Krumbachova was also responsible for production design.
It is an extraordinary fantasy horror film about the transformation of a girl into a woman. The world that the film presents gives the impression of a fairy tale and a nightmare at the same time. It is not said where the story is happening, nor when it is happening.
Although at first glance it may seem that the events that take place in the film do not make sense, the whole action in it is very clear.
Valerie wakes up one day and realizes that her earrings are gone. During her search she notices a scary looking man with a mask- Constable.
Valerie is very confused by the strange world that surrounds her. Everything is suddenly ... strange, her relations with others, society's attitude towards her, but men treat her and look at her differently, but she has to come to terms with these changes. Against her will, her age robs her of innocence. In the film, the girl's room, as well as her clothes, are mostly white. Valerie is also becoming more and more aware of her sexuality against her will. This is due to the sudden change in men's attitudes towards her, someone who was supposed to protect her before now acts like a predator.
The aesthetics of the film are very girlish, quiet and delicate, but at the same time it is filled with obscure fantasies and a sense of uneasiness. Together with a very unique score, the film gives the impression that it is a dream of an adolescent girl, filled with violence, sexuality, but also flowers and the warmth of the sun's rays and the first infatuation.
it also shows the tragedy of femininity. After Valerie managed to get rid of the priest who wanted to rape her, he turned the townfolk against her and accused her of witchcraft, which was why they wanted to burn her at the stake. Additionally, another young woman gets married which makes her very unhappy, because she was not given a choice, Valerie cures the same woman from a vampire bite with her warmth and love. The conflict between the individual (a young girl) and society is shown, she cannot trust the adults in her life.
In Vítěszlav Nezval’s book, on which the film was based on, the action is set in motion by Valerie’s first menstruation,
We do not really know if the events taking place are 100% real, or if they are just an element of Valerie's imagination, who tries to cope with loneliness (she is an orphan) and living in a tiny boring town.
Valerie grows brave through her experiences.
The entire film is a feast for the eyes. The viewer observes Valeries journey that resembles a ritual which introduces her to the world of femininity and adulthood. Valerie, like most young girls, however, has to make this journey alone, learn to make decisions on her own, because adults do not necessarily always know what is best, because they themselves are often driven by their own greed. As horrible as it may seem, everyone has to get used to this new world and accept its madness.
I saw this "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" for the first time when I was a teenager, now every time I come back to it, I am overwhelmed by an incredible melancholy behind this wonderful and beautiful, but also at the same time nightmarish time of adolescence.
I started painting this self-portrait almost 10 months ago, and to this day it's not quite finished. I wanted to transfer onto canvas the emotions related to loneliness and isolation from the world caused, among others, by the global pandemic. I was cut off from my family for a year and didn't know how to deal with all these overwhelming emotions.
The painting has many layers because I treated creating it as a therapy. I painted every time i had a bad day. Creation is always about the process, not the finished work. Art is about creating a close relationship with an instrument, canvas or camera, which gives the work its emotional depth. I focused more on the color than on the drawing.
I did not pay attention to realistic proportions, I focused on personal expression. There is only one character in the foreground. Its palette is limited and its color range is muted, the composition is closed.
It looks kinda amateurish but i put my soul into it.
"The Lure", or originally "Córki Dancingu", is a Polish horror-musical from 2015 directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska, who graduated from the Kieślowski Film School in Katowice. Smoczyńska was inspired by the work of Hans Christian Andersen, but her version of the story takes place in communist Poland in the 1980s. The main characters are two mermaids, Golden and Silver, who start working in a nightclub as strippers and backup singers. The public is obsessed with them so eventually the girls become the main stars.
I love the atmosphere of this film, the neon lights of the 80's and the nightlife combined with the dark fairy-tale atmosphere. It has many disadvantages, and its reception was not very warm, but I think that due to the fact that it was the director's debut, it did quite well and it must be admitted that it is quite unique.
At the very beginning, I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch it to the end due to the amount of completely unnecessary female nudity, unfortunately it is very common in Polish productions, so I didn't expect anything else. However, the further development of the story and its very satisfying end made me feel very convinced about it.
Together with the band that helped them get a job at the nightclub, Golden and Silver formed an act called The Lure. Golden, however, still feels thirst for blood and does not want to change that. Silver, on the other hand, falls in love with the band's bassist - Mietek, but he does not reciprocate her feelings, he sees her as a fish.
Golden learns from a newly met Triton, who also comes from the sea and has his own metal band, that her sister will turn into sea foam if she falls in love with someone and that person marries someone else and if she loses her tail, her voice will dissapear.
The bandmates discover that Golden has killed the patron of the club they work for. One of them hits both girls who pass out. Their bandmates think they are dead, so they wrap them in rugs and throw them into the river. However, they return to the club and the rest of the team apologizes to them, but the atmosphere between them becomes very tense.
Silver is so desperate that Mietek loves her that she decides to have a leg transplant, it makes her lose her voice so she can't sing anymore. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, when she tries to have sex with Mietek, he runs away in disgust because Silver has started to bleed.
Unfortunately for poor Silver, Mietek later meets a girl with whom he falls in love and marries. Both sister come to the wedding reception. Golden and Triton beg Silver to eat Mietek, otherwise she will die. But she loves him too much to do it.
Silver turns into sea foam, and Golden, in a frenzy of despair, bites into Mietek's neck, killing him, and then she returns into the water.
I liked the ending very much it, i have to admit that it was very satisfying.
It's definitely one of my favourite female led horror films. It shows unrestrained female hunger and desire to be loved, and how the outside world often takes advantage of the ignorance and unawareness of young girls who do not know that not everyone can be trusted. As for the musical elements, they were quite the weaker side, but that's just my opinion because it was not really my type of music.
To sum up, I think that if someone likes female horror movies with a little more fairy-tale atmosphere, they definitely should watch this piece, I think it is something that girls entering adulthood would love.
"Now you will see a film,
for children...
perhaps.
But, i nearly forgot!
you must...
close your eyes
Otherwise, you won't see anything"
Alice (1988) directed by the Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer is a trip to the land of dark surrealist fantasy based on the work of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" from 1865. This film is a mix of live action with stop motion animation which helps to create a disturbing, unnatural atmosphere. By combining these two media, the viewer is able to easily distinguish the world of a child's imagination from the real one. Among older Czech films you can find many surreal gems and it hurts me a bit that the world does not appreciate them as they deserve.
The visuals in "Alice" are some of the most beautiful I've ever seen in a feature film, attention to detail is amazing. Jan Švankmajer was dissatisfied with the previous adaptations of Caroll's works which omitted the darker and more mature elements from the book, so he decided to create one himself, it was his first feature film. Compared to his predecessors, Švankmajer presented the story of Alice not as a fairy tale, but as a disturbing dream. The director decided to show the Wonderland through the eyes of a child, but without infantile simplifications and softenings, but with a dose of surrealism and madness. It is not aimed at children.
The film's original name is "Něco z Alenky" which in translation means "Something from Alice". It is not really faithfull to the book. Apart from the first scene, we only see one actress.
Most of the characters were made out of everyday items and some of them were built from the bones of dead animals, plastic eyes, doll clothes and metal tools.
In scenes where Alice shrinks, she is played by a doll.
The movie starts with Alice sitting in her room, which is filled with all kinds of toys, but the girl is bored. Suddenly her white stuffed rabbit comes to life, dresses up, breaks the case in which it was locked, glances at its watch, then runs out into the field. The girl runs after it and jumps into the drawer.
The drawer turns out to be a tunnel, which then turns into a corridor of a tenement house. There, the White Rabbit sits at the table and eats dinner, but at the sight of Alice, he scares away and the girl falls into the hole, however, this hole turns out to be a lift, the girl goes down. Between the floors there are shelves full of preserves, eyes, bones and metal elements. Finally at the very bottom, Alice drinks the ink and shrinks, then eats the poppy seed cake and becomes big.
In the forest, Alice meets a caterpillar from whom she receives two pieces of a mushroom, thanks to which she can change sizes. The girl is now focusing on discovering the mysterious world she found herself in. With the help of a magic mushroom from Mr. Caterpillar's, she enlarges the building, peers inside and finds the White Rabbit, who unsuccessfully tries to calm the crying child. However, she is not a human, but a little pig, so Alice lets her out, solving the problem. During this time, she meets other inhabitants of Wonderland - Butler Fish and Butler Frog, who provide her with an invitation from the Queen of Hearts.
Nothing is as it seems. Skulls hatch from chicken eggs and bed bugs emerge from a tin can. And although all this is surprising - especially for the viewer - the protagonist treats it as an agenda, and adjusts to the dream poetics which are ruling Wonderland.
The White Rabbit does not keep his watch on a chain in his vest pocket, but in his belly stuffed with sawdust. To prevent too many of them from falling out, it fastens its insides with a safety pin, and when taking out the watch, it licks it thoroughly every time.
In one of the last scenes in the film, the girl is at a trial before the Queen of Hearts. All participants in the process are given their roles written down and are supposed to play them. Alice refuses to read the finished script, especially since she is innocent of eating the cookies. As the Queen insists that Alice stick to the text and plead guilty, the girl nonchalantly goes to the plate of cookies and begins to eat them, stating that at least she will not be completely innocent.
At the end, Alice wakes up in her own room, where she fell asleep from boredom, And her imagination brought the toys scattered around her room to live. Everything is back to normal, there are no supernatural events. The only thing missing is the White Rabbit that escaped from the glass case.
In my opinion, this is the most interesting and best adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Švankmajer perfectly captured the dark atmosphere of this book. He aimed his film at an older viewer who would notice the darkness in the literary prototype and appreciate its austere and surreal version.
Sedmikrasky- “a necrologue about a negative way of life”
I first saw this film when I was about 13 and it's hard to put into words how big of an impact it had on a young girl just entering adolescence. It was only then that I began to see more and more often that the world in which I live is not built for me and does not belong to me, therefore the story of two young women who take advantage of its corruption for their own benefit and fall into a spiral of hedonistic madness appealed to me so much. I was and still am infatuated with girls' disobedience to a world led by men. Me and my best friend at the time wanted to base our entire personalities on the main characters.
The main characters, Marie I and Marie II were everything I wanted to be, I wanted to be as brave as they are and not to take into account what others think about me, despite the fact that I see the cruelty and decay of this world, as an individual, I am not able to with it fight or fix it, so why can't I use my short stay on earth for my own pure pleasure?
“Sedmikrasky (eng. Daisies)” was directed by the one-of-a-kind Czech avant-garde filmmaker Věra Chytilová and is considered one of the most important films from the Czechoslovak New Wave. It was filmed two years before the Prague Spring, or more precisely in 1966. It was highly criticized by the right-wing. The authorities found it harmful to their ideas, which resulted in it being banned from theaters or export in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and the director herself was banned from working until 1975. This movie is full of consumerism and a negative attitude towards the authoritarian system, the girls did not provide a moral example, they refused to play the roles that society required of them. Chytilova herself described it as "a farce on parasitism", it is also seen as a satire of the decadence of the bourgeoisie. the film was also, a counterattack to the Stalinist regime.
Chytilova collaborated on screenplay with Ester Krumbachova, who was a screenwriter, costume designer, stage designer, author and director, and has worked in productions such as 1970's “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders”.
The movie begins with a montage showing the movement of machines and bombs falling to the ground causing explosions, in the background we can hear rhythmic music that sounds a bit like a march.
Then we meet the two main characters Marie I and Marie II, which are a reflection of Anne I and Anne II of the “Seven Deadly Sins” by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Young girls move like robots or dolls and are accompanied by creaking sounds. Chytilova ridicules the absurd demands on women in the male dominated society, and with this action she emphasizes how silly is the patriarchal ideal of femininity, which does not exist, but is only a performance. The way girls behave indicates the infantilization of women by society. However, Marie I and Marie II will later use this infantilization for their own benefit.
The girls sit on the beach, Marie II puts a wreath of daisies on her head, these flowers are a symbol of purity and innocence, and the wreath of flowers in Slavic culture was supposed to symbolize virginity. Another frequently recurring symbol is green apples (the apple of temptation). Marie I blows a trumpet. The girls find the world spoiled, so why can't they be spoiled as well? Suddenly they find themselves in a clearing in the middle of which there is a tree with forbidden fruit. Marie II takes a peach from it. Then the girls are in their room, Maria II spits the pit from her mouth.
The first of the girls' “pranks” is a date in a restaurant with an older man whom they use to satisfy their gluttony and then leave him at a train station. The man is so blinded by their affection towards him that he is unaware of their obvious pretending and playing with him. They are not like real humans, they are more like images, which also highlights how women are perceived in society. What is the point of my existence if not to be looked at?
Wherever they go, they wreak havoc. They make a fuss in the bar, they use men more and more often, they play with them, men are practically only a source of food and entertainment for them, and their telephone numbers are written on the walls of their flat, which also changes beyond recognition with the unfolding action of the film.
One of the scenes that touched me a lot was when a woman working in a restaurant that girls go to tells them in the toilet that they don't have time for her anymore, to which the Maries reply that they are in a hurry not even looking at the woman, only correcting their makeup in the mirror, the woman looks at them kindly and sings "youth, why do you run away so quickly, why, as I recall you, an eye tears" but they ignore it rejecting the fact that one day they will have to grow old as well.
One of the most common sins they commit is gluttony. In one of the scenes they are lying on their bed, their apartment looks like a tornado passed through it, in the background you can hear the voice of a man who professes Marie II love from the telephone receiver. The girls treat these confessions like a background noise, a radio broadcast and are too busy feasting.
They jump out of a moving train, steal money, but the truth is that they are still missing something and are not entirely happy, but they try not to think about it. Marie II turns on the gas in their apartment at one point, but is saved by the fact that she forgot to close the window. They think a lot about their existence and feel misunderstood and isolated from the rest of the world.
“-Do you feel it?
-What?
-How quickly the life passes”
Finally, they go to the countryside with the intention of spreading their chaos on a larger scale, but nobody pays attention to them there, they want desperately to be noticed. Eventually they find a banquet hall overflowing with food, and they immediately start eating and drinking, they have a food fight as well. They break plates and glasses and finally climb onto the huge crystal chandelier then begin to swing on it.
Suddenly they fall from the chandelier right into the lake and start to drown, but no one wants to help them, they shout that they don't want to be spoiled anymore.
Then chytilova shows viewers what their attempt to fix everything might look like. They break into the banquet hall again and try to clean up the mess they made. But what is broken cannot be saved. They try to fix the shattered plates and clean all the food. When cleaning they whisper: “we will polish it and clean it and we will be so happy”,” because we are polite, happy and hardworking”, “thanks to our work we are both so happy”. Eventually they lay down on the table after their hard work and say:
-We are both so happy. Say that we are happy
-Are we pretending this?
-No. We are really happy
-But it is not a problem
Then the crystal chandelier falls on them and the scene cuts to a war footage.
Vera Chytilova dedicates this film “to those who fall ill over a trampled salad”.
The Maries themselves would certainly not describe themselves as feminists, but their anarchist approach to a system that is unfair to them may be considered feminism. Many people say that this film focuses on criticizing the actions of these young girls, but I believe that it is a criticism of the world that surrounds them, and the very presentation of women and their rebelliousnes in chytilova's film is really modern.
Both Maries use their inferior position in society and their hyper-femininity for their own purposes, It is their way of finding themselves and surviving in a world that doesn't make any sense.
The Czechoslovak New Wave is divided into two types: symbolic/allegorical, such as Vera Chytilova's films, and realistic films, such as those of Milosa Forman, but they are united by the observation of man and the analysis of his nature, as well as a deeper analysis of humanity and reality.
“Sedmikrasky” is edited to look like a collage. From seemingly incoherent shots, a fragmented plot with elements of a morality play emerges. The film is sometimes black and white, and at other times it flashes in different colors, lots of jump cuts and discontinuity. The editing of the film is as rebellious as the main characters are. It resembles images that can be seen in dreams.
