Germany Year Zero (1948)

 Roberto Rossellini's "Germany Year Zero"

In the final installment of what many call Roberto Rossellini's war trilogy, "Germany Year Zero" continues the neo-realist style that Rossellini helped popularize globally. The first two installments of this unofficial trilogy, "Rome Open City" and "Paisan," both center in Italy either directly before or directly after the Allied liberation. However, "Germany Year Zero" takes place in Germany in the aftermath of the war.

The film follows a young German boy as we navigates the ruins of Berlin looking for food, money, and resources for his family. His father has a bed-stricken malady, his sister frequents bars hooking up with Allied soldiers, and his brother is a former Nazi soldier who spends his days hiding and afraid to go out into the world. The young boy, Edmund, finds work by selling Hitler recordings for a former teacher. After Edmund's father's condition worsens, the boy mistakenly misunderstands his former teacher's advice about nihilism and believes that he must kill his father to put him out of his misery. He poisons him and then becomes so despondent that he jumps from the ruins of a tall building.

"Germany Year Zero" appears to be a sort of black sheep in Rossellini's war trilogy. While there are many similarities between this film and those, there are enough differences that scholars have remarked make a huge change in quality. The trilogy is all cohesively neo-realist. "Germany Year Zero" uses non-professional actors much like the other two films. It also features gritty, urban stories of immense poverty and the depressive life of those living in the ruins of war. However, where "Germany Year Zero" differs from "Rome Open City" and "Paisan" is in its filming process. While the other two were shot entirely on-location, "Germany Year Zero" was mostly shot in a studio. Rossellini did shoot scenes in Berlin, however, he used rear screen projections for many of the exterior Berlin scenes. 

This main difference with this film caused many critics to judge the realistic quality of the film. That, along with many considering the film to be far more melodramatic than the previous two, are the reasons the film is considered the weakest of the three. While I completely disagree that the lower quality of this film is attributed to any sort of 'lack of realism,' I do think the overall story lacks something. I think that despite much of the film being a product of studio filming, the film does not lack any 'realism' by any means. However, I agree with Andre Bazin's opinion of the film, stating that is is 'not a movie but a sketch, a rough draft of a work Rossellini hasn't given us." I found this to be very true, as I felt that the film was not a completely flesh-out work. Although, this did not stop me from enjoying the feature and even getting something out of it. Rather, it is the reason why I believe it to the weakest of the trilogy.

What I was mainly able to get out of it was how depressing Rossellini viewed the state of Germany in the aftermath of the war. Both visually and thematically, Germany is in a continued state of downward peril. Visually, to see a young child (along with many young children) walking through the ruins of Berlin having to 'grow up quickly' and do rough manual labor along with hustling to find food and survive creates a depressive visual image that stays with you. Thematically, to watch this young boy descend into nihilism to the point of murdering his father and himself, is rather depressive as well. Rossellini's vision of post-war Germany is that of complete ruin, both of the external landscape as well as the internal. 

Rossellini's vision of Germany was not at all liked by Germans, as they believed the film had too much of a pessimistic attitude. Bosley Crowther of the "New York Times" said the film had a "strange emptiness of genuine feeling." I agree with that, but with an asterisk. Because of this lack of genuine feeling, the viewing experience seems to lack post-watch engagement. It is why the film is the weakest of Rossellini's trilogy. However, because of this 'lack of genuine feeling,' the film's attitude itself seems to be expressed somehow and maybe this is the point. Through the harsh reality of German life as portrayed by Rossellini in the film, the post-war sentiment was that of some emptiness and desolation. It's not hard to come away from a film in which the realities of life are so difficult for a young boy that it drives him to kill his father and then jump off a building and not feel a bit empty and cold. For that reason, the film is memorable and even a bit harrowing. This is what stays with you.