Durch diese Nacht sehe ich keinen einzigen Stern (2005)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Dagmar Knöpfel

Writers:

Bozena Nemcová (letters)
Dagmar Knöpfel (writer)

Release Date:

17 November 2005 (Germany)

Genre:

Biography | Drama

Plot Keywords:

Funeral | Abusive Husband | Female Writer | Terminal Illness | Unhappy Marriage

Cast

Corinna Harfouch	...	Bozena Nemcová
Bolek Polívka	...	Josef Nemec
Petr Forman	...	Danek
Ondrej Vetchý	...	Dr. Lambl
Anna Polívková	...	Dora Nemcová
Tatána Fischerová	...	Duchess
Adrian Jastraban	...	Jurenka
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Eva Maria Bayerwaltes	...	(voice)
Manfred Erdmann	...	(voice)
Libuse Geprtová
Robert Gwisdek
Michael Rüth	...	Voice of Salesman (voice)
Martin Umbach	...	(voice)

Also Known As:

Through This Night (International: English title) (festival title)

Runtime:

Canada:112 min (Montréal Film Festival) | Argentina:112 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival)

Country:

Germany

Language:

German

Color:

Color

Certification:

Argentina:13

Filming Locations:

Prague, Czech Republic

Company:

Arte

It is not just slow - it is painful

The German title, fully translated:

Through this night I cannot see any stars

would well describe the movie - it a study in despair, rather than the story of Bozena Nemcova. - heroine of this movie, who lived from 1820 to 1862 " and was a major figure in the Czech national revival" http://www.radio.cz/en/article/59665

She was a talented writer, not a great one, if compared with contemporary world authors like Gustave Flaubert, but important in her time and place. She was born in Vienna in modest circumstances. Her husband was a low-level employee of the Hapsburg empire and while marriage was not happy, it is hard to imagine him to be the utterly coarse and cruel lout and drunk shown in the movie. She separated from her husband in 1850, lived alone, and had a series of affairs. She was called the first Czech feminist.

The acting in the movie was excellent, but it was not able to resurrect the script, set on showing her life as a series of painful episodes.

This is absolutely not a movie for children. Its frequent graphic depictions of uterine bleeding would be terribly upsetting. I do not recommend the movie to adults either. It begins with her funeral and tells you almost nothing about her life, only about the pain caused by her unspecified illness and by her marriage.

I think that B. Nemcova would be offended by this portrait of her. She was not a passive victim of her environment, as shown in one disconnected image after another. She was a brave and intelligent woman, with ideas that were advanced for that century.

It would be wonderful if someone would make a film of her life, her entire life, that put everything in a broader perspective: her suffering in the context of her whole life, her life in the context of her times, her beginnings and successes as well as the apparently bitter end.