Věra Chytilová’s second most famous work is perhaps her aesthetically wildest. Shot on the heels of Daisies (1966), Fruit of Paradise retells the origin myth of Adam, Eve and Satan amidst the opulent spring foliage of a prehistoric spa. Exploiting Eastmancolor to its limits, Chytilová and director of photography Jaroslav Kučera open the film with a hypnochromatic bravura of movement, montage and multiple exposure, which sets the terrain for an Edenic comedy-thriller absurd and universal in equal measure. Released at a time of intensified repression, the film was not explicitly censored (“because no one understood it,” according to the director) yet it did garner Chytilová a seven-year filmmaking ban. 1968’s Soviet incursion of Czechoslovakia haunts this Old Testament tale like the elusive, deceitful serpent, even as Chytilová is anything but ashamed of her indulgent, oneiric and tactically allegorical images.