Fruit of paradise

The sensorial and the profane of Věra Chytilová

Abstract

Fruit of paradise (1970) is the third feature film by Věra Chytilová and her last film made in the context of the Czech and Slovak New Wave Cinema and the Prague Spring. Imbued with avant-garde aesthetic references and attuned to the changes that occurred in the country during the recordings, the authors integrate the occupation of the Warsaw Pact troops in the country to the original themes of the script, about betrayal and search for truth. The filmic world of Chytilová, Jaroslav Kučera (cinematographer of the film) and Ester Krumbachová (co-writer, costume designer and production designer) is built through optical, sound and assembly distortions, which stress the relations of bodies in space. The present analysis seeks to investigate the ways in which these formal experimentations of camera, montage, dramaturgy, acting and costume create unstable symbols in a discourse more sensorial than narrative, which potentiates debates on theories of cinema through the senses, such as of Laura Marks (2000), who thinks of cinema as skin, and Giuliana Bruno (2002; 2014) who thinks of images as surfaces. This tension of tactile effects brings a narrative of the forms; the colors, the oscillations of action, the spaces, the soundtrack. Their images and sounds also require curiosity from the spectators to sensorially surrender to them – a quality inherent in cinema, accentuated by the experimentations of Chytilová, Krumbachová and Kučera.