Germania anno zero

... from UGC and director Roberto Rossellini. In the bombed out ruins of Germany's capital city, the Kohler family struggles to survive. The father (Ernst Pittschau) is sick and bedridden. Eldest son Karl-Heinz (Franz-Otto Kruger) is a former soldier in hiding from the police and unable to work. Daughter Eva (Ingetraud Hinze) goes out at night to try and skim what she can from the soldiers looking for companionship. Which leaves 12-year-old Edmund (Edmund Moeschke) to provide what food he can by working various menial jobs. He eventually falls in with petty criminals, and maybe worse, as the family's situation continues to deteriorate. Also featuring Erich Guhne, Jo Herbst, Christl Merker, and Hans Sangen.

Rossellini closes out his War Trilogy (after 1945's Rome Open City and 1946's Paisan) with this stark look at survival in a former war-zone. The actors are all non-professionals, and it shows, but one gets used to it, and Rossellini does a good job of keeping things within his performers' range. This is now the third film from 1948, following Berlin Express and A Foreign Affair, that I've watched recently that has been set in postwar Germany. Unlike those two, this one doesn't use the country as a backdrop for entertainment. Rather, this is an unflinching look into human misery and deprivation, and not for those looking for a good time. While I like the other two in Rossellini's trilogy more, this is still a very noteworthy, and recommended, film for those with the constitution for it.

This was on Criterion DVD, part of the Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy box set, containing all 3 films. Each disc has loads of extras pertaining to that particular film, and the Germany Year Zero disc also has a feature-length documentary on Rossellini's life and career. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the man, his work, or international films of the mid-20th century.

this is at times an incredibly painful movie to watch as rosselini portrays the struggle of ordinary germans to survive the devastation of post war berlin and rebuild their lives. the protagonist is a 12 year old boy whose childhood has been stolen by war - he tries to live up to the responsibilities that are forced on him but it's all too much for a skinny little boy to handle. the desperation depicted in this movie really shows the horrors of war for all people - even the ones who initiate it and lose. this is a remarkably compassionate film - i cannot recommend it highly enough. 10 stars.

After watching "Roma, città aperta" in the 1970's and "Paisà" in the late 1980's, I finally saw "Germania anno zero", the last part of Roberto Rossellini's war trilogy. Compared to the first two installments, they all share the immediacy of the war, but this time Rossellini is more direct: no subplots, only a handful of characters, all of whom move around young Edmund (Edmund Mëschke), the 12-year-old German boy who lives in a miserable apartment with five other families, and who maintains his sick father, his brother who was a Nazi soldier and his sister, who is close to becoming a prostitute. Edmund pretends he's old enough to work, but when he's denied that opportunity, he steals, sells items in the black market, or allows his former teacher to caress him lasciviously for a few marks. What's more impressive in this film is the lack of sentimentality – compared to De Sica's children movies- and the absence of preaching: when one character does preach, he would have better stayed shut! I think that many scholars are no longer interested in the aesthetics of Italian Neorealism, but–in my appreciation- Roberto Rossellini is one of the big names in the history of cinema, far more important than other filmmakers who are idolized, and his war films are more interesting to me than later works as "Voyage in Italy".

As a child of the post war Berlin ruins myself, I confess this film had a special relevance. But nothing could have prepared me for the sheer impact that Germany Year Zero has upon the soul. Roberto Rosselini captured a tragedy that has been largely ignored and his haunting work screams the pain of post war civilian suffering in Berlin louder than any documentary.

Not only filmed in the very streets where a million died only months before, all those appearing in Stunde Null were quite clearly living the very experience they were enacting. These were not actors. Their performances are clumsy and strained without the polish of professional training or Hollywood editing. But that was the magic of this production. This was not drama but rather a window of reality. Their faces were scarred by the terrors they had just survived and one can only wonder at their courage to enact their own daily suffering for the entertainment of others.

The essence of the plot is simple enough. It is the story of ordinary German civilians trying to survive the starvation and deprivations of 1945 Berlin. The central character is a 12 year old boy, Edmund, who has to endure anything and everything in order to provide for his family. And in the end.....

Well nobody knows what really happened to Edmund Moeschke, the ex Hitler Jugend who was playing himself. After filming the external shots in Berlin the entire cast were taken to Rome in 1946 where the interior scenes were put together. And of course most of them attempted to remain there. Edmund disappeared from history and probably met his end somewhere in the Roman streets. Certainly he has never emerged to claim the accolades that would undoubtedly be poured upon him were he to only mention his name.

But Edmund will never be forgotten because his tragic story touches the soul and speaks for millions of other youngsters who were so cruelly sacrificed in that terrible conflict. This is not a film: it is a masterpiece.

Rossellini's films just after World War II are to be appreciated as both social comment and for artistic advancement in the matter of film. This film, like no other, deals with Germany as a vanquished nation, driven downward toward annihilation. Edmund, a young boy, made to beggar himself in order to survive, gives one of the truly authentic portraits of youth driven to despair ever seen on the screen.

How used to sentimentality we Americans had become by the time Rossellini made this desolate vision of a destroyed post-war Europe.

How coddled and led astray were we by image after image of dimpled, freckled kids clutching hold of their pets. Children the likes of Mickey Rooney or Dean Stockwell. How engaging...and yet how unreal.

Edmund isn't just a child, we learn. But more so, a country.

A nation bombed into rubble and tasting its own ashes. Stripped of everything of any value and reduced to zero. Rejected by everyone and forced into murder...in the end made to stare death in the face.

Germany YEAR ZERO will shock you. Make you wince as the tragedy of a nation corrupted unfolds, and self-destructs.

Edmund is no longer just a boy made to suffer in a world he never made. In the end he's our conscience.