Liska’s Golem

The Last Golem from The Nights of Prague (1969).

Since watching The Cremator I’ve been listening to Zdenek Liska’s music from the early Svankmajer films, and following leads to the composer’s other work. One film with a Liska score that I’d not previously come across is Prazské noci (The Nights of Prague, 1968), one of those anthology films there seemed to be so many of in the late 60s and early 70s. Of the four stories on the theme of Prague at night, Liska provides the music for The Last Golem, a tale of Rabbi Loew and the legendary Golem written and directed by Jirí Brdecka. YouTube seems to have little more than this short clip but it does at least give a flavour of the piece. As usual Liska’s music is unmistakable, and as good as anything else he was doing in the 1960s. Seeing this makes me wish that Jan Svankmajer had tried his hand at a Golem film when Liska was still alive.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Cremator by Juraj Herz
• Golem (2012)
• More Golems
• Das Haus zur letzten Latern
• Hugo Steiner-Prag’s Golem
• Barta’s Golem