Germany Year Zero (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Germany Year Zero (1948) – R. Rossellini

Roberto Rossellini shot this film in 1947 in the ruins of Berlin (but with interior shots in an Italian studio) which gives it a lot of its power. We follow a 13-year-old boy, Edmund, who has to cope with the aftermath of war – conditions that are detailed rather didactically through the dialogue spoken by the boy and his father and siblings and members of other families (all living in the same apartment due to housing shortages). So, despite adhering to the genre known as Italian Neo-Realism, it is very apparent how scripted the film is. Rossellini shows the despair of the German people – whether they followed Hitler or not – and, if not exactly excusing anyone’s actions, he still documents the tragedy of the situation in a way that evokes pathos. This is especially the case for Edmund, young enough not to deserve any blame and scrappy enough to adapt to his conditions: learning about the Black Market and ways to get food, illegally or not (and there is a strong implication that women, girls, and even boys are/were exploited sexually as a result of their plight). Unfortunately, Edmund may not be mature enough to fully grasp the way adults respond to such terrible events, taking his father’s cry that he wishes he were dead all too literally. As a result, the film turns to horror, as it should, and I suspect the audience of the time felt helpless to undo the trauma of the war even as the current audience must surely leave feeling more strongly anti-war.