Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec, 1964)
Ladislav Jánsky and Antonin Kumbera in Diamonds of the Night
Cast: Antonin Kumbera, Ladislav Jánsky, Ilse Bischofská. Screenplay: Arnost Lustig, Jan Nemec, based on a novel by Lustig. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kuchera, Miroslav Ondrícek. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Vlastimil Hala, Jan Rychlik.
Two young men escape from a Nazi transport at the start of Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night, and the camera follows them in a breathless run through the fields toward an uncertain destination. And in a sense that destination remains uncertain, even though they manage to cadge a hunk of bread from a woman in a farmhouse and are eventually captured by a group of old men with hunting rifles. Nemec gives us two visions of the young men's fate at the hands of their captors. His first feature film, a little over an hour, is laced with memories and ambiguous images and touches of the surreal. At its best, it's almost hyperreal. In the scene in which the old men celebrate their capture, for example, the soundtrack is filled with the slightly disgusting noises of eating as the victors scarf down their lunch. It's possible to interpret Diamonds of the Night as a fable about the repression of the young by the old, or as an allegory about escaping from Nazi terror only to end up under Soviet repression, but it stands on its own for its innovative use of cinematic technique, a hallmark of the brief period of liberation experienced by Czech filmmakers in the 1960s.