The first need: hunger in Jan Němec's Diamonds of the Night. Issue 2 (3rd May 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: O'Key, Dominic
• Is Part Of: Studies in Eastern European cinema. Volume 7:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 102
• Page End: 113
• Publication Date: 2016-05-03
• Subjects: Czech cinema -- Jan Němec -- hunger -- Holocaust -- Czechoslovak New Wave; Motion pictures -- Europe, Eastern -- Periodicals; Motion pictures; Europe, Eastern; Film; Osteuropa; 791.43094705
• DOI: 10.1080/2040350X.2016.1155263
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-350X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article analyses the semiotic grammar of food in Jan Němec's surreal film Démanty noci / Diamonds of the Night (1964). After first locating Diamonds within the Czechoslovak New Wave and a tradition of Holocaust literature and cinema, I explore the film's representation of hunger and thirst. My analysis synthesises the film with Primo Levi's evocative meditation on the victims of the Holocaust, arguing that Němec's protagonists become a form of 'living hunger', and enter into a 'condition of pure survival'. The film thus comments on the totalising Nazi mission and its attempt to desubjectify its victims by laying claim to their bodies.