Alemanha, Ano Zero

One of Roberto Rossellini's masterpieces, Germany Year Zero, suffers only from one minor liability, which is not totally the filmmaker's fault. The film was shot in German with the native language, but it was later shown around the world (at least I think around the world) in an Italian-dubbed print, which is also the version currently available on American DVD. True, Rossellini (as far as I know) didn't speak German, and he had it in Italian so he wouldn't have trouble getting the film distributed in his native land where he broke ground with Open City and Paisan. But it is a fair enough indication that not EVERYTHING in a film such as Germany Year Zero is based in total reality based on seeing this version. Once this is looked past though, one can get into the actual story and characters, which is what Rossellini is after- getting at least the emotional loss in this world perfectly clear.

Germany Year Zero - the third in a so-called trilogy of films that began with his breakthrough Open City and continued with Paisan - was brilliantly executed, in the quasi-documentary cinematography by Robert Juillard, the appropriately sorrowful score by Renzo Rossellini, and in the performances by first timers like Edmund Moeschke as Edmund Koeler (the main character), Ingetraude Hinze as Eva Koeler (Edmund's desperate sister), and Erich Guhne as Herr Enning (Edmund's ex-teacher who becomes a crucial supporting character). Edmund is a pre-teen who's lived through the devastation of the War, like his family, the families he lives with, and everyone else around him in the city, and he tries to get work despite his all-too-young age. Things seem bleak for his family, as his brother doesn't want to work for fear of being caught as a prisoner of the war, his elderly father can't work, and his sister goes out every night looking for things that only help herself. When Edmund runs into his once school-teacher (Enning), who is part of the cold, evil remnants of the Nazi regime, and this leads into the last act of the film, with startling, heart-breaking results.

While the story of Edmund- and of the line that scorches a kid's conscience between childhood innocence and the horrors of the real world- is a compelling and historically important one to tell, what Rossellini achieves here more than anything is the sense of dread in a desolate atmosphere. He achieved that in Open City too (I have yet to see Paisan so I can't comment), but that film had the tendency to take a little too much time involving us in sub-plots. In Germany Year Zero, however, the images presented stay with the viewer long after the film has ended since they're akin to the kind of sensibility Polanski had with The Pianist, in a technical sense- we're following someone in his own personal struggle for survival in an environment that's in rubble, with many of the people around the character without much hope. There's also the theme of sacrifice, like in the other two films in Rossellini's trilogy, and that plus a theme of a sort of helpless hope in human spirit, stays true through the seventy minutes of this film. Highly recommended (the language dubbing practically regardless).

I must confess to a lingering fascination of the condition of Germany, and the German peoples, immediately following WWII. The country, of course, was broken - destroyed - in ruins. More importantly, so were the people. The real life stories I have read speak to so many aspects of their condition: shame, starvation, disbelief, shock of the revelations of the evil of their own doing, and despair. Always despair. They are stories of how the human spirit can overcome the most horrific nightmares and conditions.

This movie drills to the heart of many of those issues, sometimes subtly, sometimes brazenly. Rossellini was never better.

I consider this movie to be a must view on two levels: First, it is quite frankly one of the best moves ever made. Easy words to throw around, and said too often about too many films. Those words apply here. Second, it is a must view for the understanding it can provide of what the world - particularly Germany and Europe - were like after WWII. It belongs to a small suite of movies (such as Schindler's List) that show real insight, a true view into the world during this bleak time in history.

This is the third film in Rossellini's war trilogy; the other 2 films are Roma citta' aperta (Rome Open City) and Paisa. I thought this film was of the same quality as Paisa. Rossellini continues to use the same sort of staging and neorealist style as before. It's interesting to see the footage of (mostly destroyed) Berlin... It's interesting to see how a director from a country that was once allied with Nazi Germany decides to portray postwar life in Germany. A bleak film, but very Rossellini-ish: children as important characters, sexual perversion equated with moral turpitude, the telescoped-in time frame. As in his first film, Roma citta' aperta, Rossellini provides an intense story. Neorealism can sound dry--and some of the neorealist films were rather depressing and not exactly fun to watch--but this film is definitely more than watchable.

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".