Something Different

Director: Věra Chytilová

1963 / 90min / DCP

Olympic gold medalist gymnast Eva Bosáková essentially plays herself in Chytilová’s formally audacious feature debut (released three years before the landmark Daisies), which braids together two almost entirely independent narrative strands—one of documentary-style footage of Bosáková’s “Eva” undergoing grueling training by harsh male taskmaster coaches in preparation for what will be her final competition, the other of scenes from the life of overworked and underappreciated housewife “Vera” (Vera Uzelacová)—which together form an incisive commentary on the status of women in contemporary Czechoslovakia, where even fame is no guaranteed protection from masculine tyranny. “Radically and thrillingly different from more or less any film that was being made at the time and… significantly more advanced than most films that have been made since.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker