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Les Diamants de la nuit

Original title: Démanty noci
  • 1964
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 7m
IMDb RATING
7.3/10
3.1K
YOUR RATING
Les Diamants de la nuit (1964)
DramaWar

Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. The film goes beyond the themes of war and anti-Nazism and concerns itself with man's struggle t... Read allTwo Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. The film goes beyond the themes of war and anti-Nazism and concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. The film goes beyond the themes of war and anti-Nazism and concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.

  • Director
    • Jan Nemec
  • Writers
    • Arnost Lustig
    • Jan Nemec
  • Stars
    • Ladislav Jánsky
    • Antonín Kumbera
    • Ilse Bischofova
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.3/10
    3.1K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Jan Nemec
    • Writers
      • Arnost Lustig
      • Jan Nemec
    • Stars
      • Ladislav Jánsky
      • Antonín Kumbera
      • Ilse Bischofova
    • 25User reviews
    • 40Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win total

    Photos26

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    Top cast18

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    Ladislav Jánsky
    Ladislav Jánsky
    • První
    • (as Ladislav Jánský)
    Antonín Kumbera
    Antonín Kumbera
    • Druhý
    Ilse Bischofova
    Ilse Bischofova
    • Zena
    • (as Ilse Bischofová)
    Jan Riha
    • Starý muz
    • (as Jan Říha)
    Ivan Asic
    • Starý muz
    • (as Ivan Asič)
    August Bischof
    • Starý muz
    Josef Koggel
    • Starý muz
    Oscar Müller
    • Starý muz
    • (as Oskar Müller)
    Anton Schich
    • Starý muz
    Rudolf Stolle
    • Starý muz
    Josef Koblizek
    • Starý muz
    • (as Josef Koblížek)
    Josef Kubat
    • Starý muz
    • (as Josef Kubát)
    Rudolf Lukásek
    • Starý muz
    • (as Rudolf Lukášek)
    Bohumil Moudry
    • Starý muz
    • (as Bohumil Moudrý)
    Karel Navratil
    • Starý muz
    • (as Karel Návratil)
    Evzen Pichl
    • Starý muz
    • (as Evžen Pichl)
    Frantisek Procházka
    • Starý muz
    • (as František Procházka)
    Frantisek Vrana
    • Starý muz
    • (as František Vrána)
    • Director
      • Jan Nemec
    • Writers
      • Arnost Lustig
      • Jan Nemec
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews25

    7.33.1K
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    Featured reviews

    8oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx

    Visceral Czech Holocaust movie with superb editing

    The movie follows the diamonds of the night, two plucky lads from Prague. The Nazis are giving off bad vibes to our brace of youngins, they're on a train wearing coats with letters KL painted on the back, which look suspiciously like they could be standing for Konzentrationslager (concentration camp). So the geese attempt to climb out of the sauce and jump train. That's the first scene of the movie which is a brilliant tracking shot that should be cinematic history if it's not already regarded as such. They run/stumble to the top of a hill whereupon they collapse, and you can feel their bronchi beseeching air, the blood in their mouths, the two different types of saliva, thick on the roof, thin under the tongue. The guys are less acting than living an experience that the director is demanding of them. It's very reminiscent of the Zanzibar film Le révélateur that came four years later in France, and although the use of sound here is good, it could, very much in common with that film, have been shot without. In that sense it's very cinematic.

    The film as a whole is one of the best pieces of editing you can see, and shots of survival in what look like the fir-carpeted foothills of the Sudeten mountains are juxtaposed with memories of Prague, where they have just come from. In particular we see the closed doors of people who won't help them, who we don't see, and rather fabulous Wellesian shots of Josefov and other quiet areas of Prague. A lot of the editing is repetitive and short shots are later expanded on. One example is a ghostly love story that is cut off by the purging of the Jewish areas. The use of sound here is quite good, even in shots where there should be no sound you hear muffled glaucous conversations that make everything seem very strange.

    It's another Holocaust shock film really, the shock of the Third Reich has never really gone away, apparently civilised modern society all across Europe disintegrated into a quagmire of venality and self interest, which leads one to wonder whether, even on one's own street, there are not folk who would cheerfully dismember you given abrogation of the usual checks and balances of society.
    10Maciste_Brother

    Dream-like and haunting. A one of a kind film experience

    I saw DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT one late night and I thought the movie was a recorded dream. It felt so unreal and dream-like that I thought I was inside someone's head and experiencing their dream state. The 60 minute long film is experimental but even so it's more powerful than an entire year's worth of best films. It has a documentary feel to it but the repetitious editing (day-dreams?) and amazing sound-scape obviously pulls it out of that category. The film at times feels more real than reality. The cinematography was jaw-dropping. The image quality of the version I saw was faded and it didn't look like it was a new digital transfer (or maybe that's how the film was made to look like), regardless the look was unique: super fluid editing, camera composition and movement. It's a truly amazing cinematic achievement, probably more so today as it clearly stood the test of time and its experimental qualities resonate beautifully today.

    A must see for fans of pure cinema.
    7wadetaylor

    Really liked it at first, then...

    This movie was hard to come by but I found it at the public library for rent. The video included Nemec's A Loaf of Bread, which oddly had subtitles, in German! I know as much German as Czech. Anyway about Diamonds of the Night. At the beginning I really liked the use of hand held camera and even without spoken word I knew what was going on, but as the movie progressed it over-surrealized itself, without establishing itself as a work of surrealism. I am not sure if the tape had the complete version because it just seemed to end with no resolution. Since no one else apparently has seen it, I may never know. It wasn't very long, and was pretty cool at first I'll give it 7/10.
    8gbill-74877

    Devastating

    This is one of those works of art that deal with historical tragedy not by attempting to paint or even reference the entire picture, but by focusing on a much smaller story, and in that way, revealing aspects of it at a very human level. At the outset here, we find two Jewish boys who have escaped a train bound for a concentration camp desperately running through a dense forest, and are immediately immersed into their struggle.

    One of the techniques that Jan Nemec employed was to keep the camera on the boys as close as possible to heighten the sense of disorientation and exhaustion they feel. In a similar way, he got into their heads with voiceless flashbacks to their days before the war, like catching a ride on a streetcar in Prague, or sledding down an embankment in the wintertime, the natural kinds of things their minds might wander to. The memories of a would-be girlfriend, the various streets and doors of Prague, and a solitary bell sounding periodically all make for haunting, surreal daydreams.

    The film makes its strongest points about man's inhumanity when we are jolted back to the present, where a group of elderly hunters are tracking them down, perhaps tipped off by the wide-eyed, emotionless woman at a farm house who gave them a little food. "Halt! Halt!" one shouts, while they all fire away at the kids. They're eventually captured, and the geezers celebrate over sausages and beer, eating in front of the famished boys, oblivious to their hunger. They raise a toast to the fact that they "did it," which is intercut with a shot of the boys desperately drinking out of a river while on the run.

    This is damning commentary of the German citizenry during the war, and an indictment of those who offered the excuse afterwards that they didn't know the horror of what Hitler was committing. There is such a bitter component to seeing these old men drunkenly carrying on with their fellows after having lived a full life, contrasted to the boys, whose lives seem destined to be cut short, and barbarically. Despite their release at the end, it's done with cruelty, as if it's all a game. It's a story that's obviously specific to real-life experiences of Arnost Lustig and his friend, but there is a universality to it as well, in the older generation being so blind to suffering, which is devastating.
    4AlsExGal

    Czech WWII drama directed by Jan Nemec

    Two young men escape from a prisoner transport train on their way to a concentration camp. They try to survive in the dense woods, but the unforgiving terrain forces them back to civilization.

    I started out enjoying this film. It's lack of dialogue (very little is spoken for much of the runtime), handheld camerawork, and harsh locations were innovative and compelling. However, as the film progressed I grew tired of the lack of narrative and the tedious experimental-film-style digressions, in the form of quick jumps for a few seconds, to what I am assuming were supposed to be the random thoughts and memories of one or both protagonists. By the film's third act, wherein a large band of elderly and doddering German citizens awkwardly chase the duo through the forest, the whole thing had fallen apart for me, and became laughable and pretentious. As usual, many or most will disagree with me, as this is another critically acclaimed "masterpiece" that I failed to connect with and/or fully comprehend. It's only 67 minutes long.

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      The opening tracking shot is the longest in Czechoslovakian cinema history and consumed one third of the film's budget.
    • Goofs
      The old men chase the two boys uphill. The boys cross over the top of the mountain, then start downhill. They get ahead, stop and rest. They then hear a truck, run DOWN to the road, chase after it (attempting to get on it from behind) flag, then fall onto the road. The old men then come from BELOW the road and captured the boys. Somehow, the old men, who had started to flag, were suddenly in front of the boys and without ever having passed by them.
    • Connections
      Edited into CzechMate: In Search of Jirí Menzel (2018)

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    FAQ

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • March 16, 1966 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • Czechoslovakia
    • Languages
      • Czech
      • German
    • Also known as
      • Diamonds of the Night
    • Production company
      • Ceskoslovenský Filmexport
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 7 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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