Diamonds of the Night / Démanty noci (1964) [Criterion Collection]

Director: Jan Nemec
Writer: Arnost Lustig (story "Darkness has no Shadows"), Jan Nemec
Stars: Ladislav Jánsky, Antonín Kumbera, Ilse Bischofova

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.

Extras:
- Interview from 2009 with director Jan Němec
- A Loaf of Bread, Němec’s 1960 student thesis film, based on a short story by Arnošt Lustig
- Arnošt Lustig Through the Eyes of Jan Němec, a short documentary from 1993
- New interview with film programmer Irena Kovarova
- New video essay on the film’s stylistic influences by scholar James Quandt
- New English subtitle translation





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