Horst_In_Translation Review of Diamonds of the Night

Diamonds of the Night (1964)

Lacks something that really makes a difference

[4/10 · 12 September 2016]

"Démanty noci" is a Czechoslovakian movie from 1964, which means it is over 50 years old already. The director is Jan Nemec and he is also the one who adapted Arnost Lustig's story "Darkness has no Shadows". The film's international title, however, is "Diamonds of the Night" and for Nemec it is one of his most famous works, even if it has not received as much awards attention as some of the other stuff he did during his career. Nemec died earlier this year and this film we have here is among his early career works, he was not even 30 when he made it. It is the story of two boys fleeing from the Nazis and it is a black-and-white film that runs for only slightly over an hour, relatively short. Now you have all the basic information and can decide for yourself if you want to see it. The good news for foreign audiences is that there is almost no dialogue in here at all, so you can watch it without subtitles. Sadly, this is also one of the reasons why it is, on many occasions, pretty difficult here to see and understand what exactly is going on. It is certainly a very artsy film that has its very own niche despite the subject being very frequent of course in film. And it is a subject that I usually have a great interest in. But neither of the characters nor the story as a whole managed to make me care for any of the aspects or protagonists here. It was more weird than entertaining or informative. I don't recommend the watch.