Věra Chytilová's The Fruit of Paradise [Ovoce stromů rajských jíme, 1969]: Radical aura and the international avant-garde

Abstract

Věra Chytilová’s The Fruit of Paradise was filmed in 1969 on the heels of Chytilová’s now world-famous feature Daisies [Sedmikrásky (1966)]. It symbolically bridges the spirit of the Czech New Wave and the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, which began in August, 1968. The director herself has stated clearly that the film is a response to this invasion; it is a radical protest presented through abstraction, and a deliberate juxtaposition of mythology, classicism, eroticism, and formal experimentation, rather than a direct linguistic affront to the authorities. This article reflects on Chytilová’s film within the context of a wider twentieth-century avant-garde, noting particular correspondences and sympathies between international surrealisms, the early twentieth-century Czech avant-garde, and American experimental filmmaking. It explores the collaborative sensory affect created in the film through a synaesthetic blend of haptic encounters staged in an imaginary Eden. Through distortion, collage, convulsive chance, repetition, and slowness, the film build a radical aura in the Brakhagean sense, delivering an emotional and political intensity via formal rather than narrative elements. In the twenty-first century, Chytilová’s body of work occupies a prominent position in an international female avant-garde, forming dialogues across regional and political boundaries past and future.