Germany Year Zero (1948)

Germany Year Zero
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Written by Roberto Rossellini, Carlo Lizzani, Max Kolpé, and Sergio Amidei
1948/Italy/France/Germany
Tevere Film/SAFDI/Union Generale Cinematographique/Deutsche Film
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Narrator: This movie, shot in Berlin in the summer of 1947, aims only to be an objective and true portrait of this large, almost totally destroyed city where 3.5 million people live a terrible, desperate life, almost without realizing it. They live as if tragedy were natural, not because of strength or faith, but because they are tired. This is not an accusation or even a defense of the German people. It is an objective assessment. Yet if anyone, after watching Edmund Koeler’s story, feels that something needs to be done-that German children need to relearn to love life-then the efforts of those who made this movie will be greatly rewarded.[/box]

Years of fascism and deprivation have corrupted an entire people to the point where its youth are completely lost. The concluding film in Rossellini’s war trilogy is even sadder than the others.

Twelve-year-old Edmund has the weight of the world on his shoulders.  His family of four is living on three ration cards.  His able-bodied elder brother is unregistered and in hiding because he fears being sent to a POW camp for having “fought until the end”.  Edmund’s elder sister unenthusiastically trolls for cash from the occupying forces in nightclubs in the evenings.  Mother is dead and father is bedridden.

So Edmund soldiers on all day every day.  He lies about his age to get odd jobs, makes black market deals, and fights to get the lumps of coal that fall off trucks.  Finally, he meets a former schoolteacher who gets him a more lucrative smuggling job.  This man is an unreconstructed True Believer whose interest in the boy evidently goes beyond the professional judging from the number of times he tousles his hair.

Then the father’s condition deteriorates still further.  Luckily he is admitted to a hospital where the food looks like a gourmet paradise and rapidly restores him. No one knows how the family will manage to care for him when he returns home.

Edmund seeks out his teacher for advice.  The kind he gets leads to the shocking conclusion of the story.

Obviously, this movie is not a walk in the park.  In addition, some of the neo-realist amateur acting is somewhat wooden.  Nonetheless, the film offers an incredible view of post-war Berlin and a profound message about the moral bankruptcy of an exhausted people.  It is at least the equal of the other two films in the trilogy, Rome, Open City and Paisan.

Clip – dubbed in Italian.  I saw the German language version.