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With this simultaneously harrowing and lyrical debut feature, Jan Němec established himself as the most uncompromising visionary among the radical filmmakers who made up the Czechoslovak New Wave. Adapted from a novel by Arnošt Lustig, Diamonds of the Night closely tracks two boys who escape from a concentration-camp transport and flee into the surrounding woods, hostile terrain where the brute realities of survival coexist with dreams, memories, and fragments of visual poetry. Along with visceral camera work by Jaroslav Kučera and Miroslav Ondříček—two of Czechoslovak cinema’s most influential cinematographers—Němec makes inventive use of fractured editing, elliptical storytelling, and flights of surrealism as he strips context away from this bare-bones tale, evoking the panicked delirium of consciousness lost in night and fog.
Original Release
09/25/1964
US Release
03/14/1968
Links
Cast
Name | Character |
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Antonín Kumbera | Druhý / The Second |
Ladislav Jánsky | První / The First |
Ilse Bischofova | Zena |
Jan Riha | Starý muz |
Ivan Asic | Starý muz |
August Bischof | Starý muz |
Josef Koggel | Starý muz |
Oscar Müller | Starý muz |
Anton Schich | Starý muz |
Rudolf Stolle | Starý muz |
Directors
Writers
Cast
Name | Character |
---|
Antonín Kumbera | Druhý / The Second |
Ladislav Jánsky | První / The First |
Ilse Bischofova | Zena |
Jan Riha | Starý muz |
Ivan Asic | Starý muz |
August Bischof | Starý muz |
Josef Koggel | Starý muz |
Oscar Müller | Starý muz |
Anton Schich | Starý muz |
Rudolf Stolle | Starý muz |
Josef Koblizek | Starý muz |
Josef Kubat | Starý muz |
Rudolf Lukásek | Starý muz |
Bohumil Moudry | Starý muz |
Karel Navratil | Starý muz |
Evzen Pichl | Starý muz |
Frantisek Procházka | Starý muz |
Frantisek Vrana | Starý muz |
Vladimír Pucholt | Second (voice) |