Diamonds of the Night

Diamonds of the Night
Film poster
Directed by Jan Němec
Produced by Jan Procházka
Erich Svabík
Written by Arnošt Lustig
Jan Němec
Starring Ladislav Jánský
Antonín Kumbera
Music by Vlastimil Hála
Jan Rychlík
Cinematography Jaromír Šofr
Edited by Oldřich Bosák
Release date
  • 25 September 1964 (1964-09-25)
Running time
 63 minutes
Country Czechoslovakia
Language Czech

Diamonds of the Night (Czech: Démanty noci) is a 1964 Czech film about two boys on the run from a train taking them to a concentration camp, based loosely on Arnošt Lustig's autobiographical novel Darkness Has No Shadow.[1] It was director Jan Němec's first full-length feature film.

Plot

Diamonds of the Night begins with two young men fleeing from a train and shedding, as they run, long black coats, on which are painted in white the letters "KL," the abbreviation for Konzentrationslager (concentration camp). The film employs little dialogue, and the boys' escape through forests and swamps, and across rocky terrain, is interpolated with the dreams, memories, hallucinations, fantasies, and flashbacks of the younger of the two boys. In one sequence, the younger boy recalls exchanging his shoes with the older boy for a piece of food; in another, he seems to imagine returning to the apartment in Prague where he used to live; and in a third, he rides a Prague tram with shot-out windows while wearing once again the coat that identifies him as a concentration camp escapee. When the boys encounter a farmer's wife, the younger boy follows her into her kitchen to ask for food, and as he struggles with thoughts of murder and rape, the film repeatedly shows both possibilities. In the end the boy silently takes a few slices of bread from her and leaves. Eventually, the boys are caught by a shooting party of elderly German-speaking men, who detain the boys in a beer hall while they drink, eat, sing, and dance, before turning the boys over to the town's mayor. As the boys are marched out of the beer hall, the leader of the shooting party calls out, "Ready, aim, fire," but the men merely laugh instead of shooting. The ending is ambiguous: Either the boys have been spared, or they are walking into the afterlife.

Cast

  • Ladislav Jánsky as the 1st Boy
  • Antonín Kumbera as the 2nd Boy
  • Ilse Bischofova as the woman

Reception

Diamonds of the Night holds an 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes,[2] with Eric Hynes of Time Out writing, "Nemec’s technique is as emotionally intuitive as it is masterful, purposefully scrambling past and present, handheld realism (a breathless opening tracking shot) and Buñuellian surrealism (fever-dreamed ants colonizing Jánsky’s angelic face). It’s a torrent of life—and cinema—in the face of death."[3]

References

  1. ↑ Hames, Peter (May 14, 2001). "Jan Nemec: Enfant terrible of the New Wave". www.ce-review.org. Central Europe Review. Retrieved September 11, 2018.
  2. ↑ Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci), retrieved 2018-07-22
  3. ↑ "Diamonds of the Night: movie review". Time Out New York. Retrieved 2018-07-22.


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