Germania anno zero (1948)
Directed by Roberto Rossellini

Film Review

For the third part of his monumental World War II trilogy, director Roberto Rossellini directs our attention to post-war Berlin and this time shows human suffering from the perspective of the German people.  The film is in the raw neo-realist style of Rossellini's previous films, Open City  (1945) and Paisa (1946) but places greater emphasis on the fictional drama.  This is contrary to Rossellini's statement that the film offers an objective assessment of events.  If anything, the film presents the Germans in a favourable light, as much victims of post-war collapse as the Italians.

Far from being a purely objective work, Germany Year Zero is strikingly humanist, revealing a director who is emotionally deeply engaged with his subject.  This can be seen not just in the narrative, in which the characters are well developed and clearly invite a moral judgement, but also in the director's camera work - close-ups, long shots and ceiling shots showing a constantly shifting perspective which is obviously calculated to stimulate our involvement.   By telling the story from the perspective of a frail young boy, the film cannot fail to be anything other than a subjective view of hardship, fear and guilt.

The film's impact derives largely from its actors' naturalistic performances - particularly that of 12-year old Edmund Koeler, who plays the film's lead character.  Edmund's obvious innocence and vulnerability emphasises the grim plight of those around him he wants to help but is powerless to do so.   In a sense, he is a symbol for the naivety of the German people who, corrupted by Nazi teachings, were driven to commit unspeakable crimes.   In the presence of his former teacher, Herr Enning,  Edmund is totally oblivious to the fact that he is being seduced by evil - he is persuaded of the right to kill because his teacher's gestures have the semblance of friendship.  His innocence prevents him from seeing the sinister, paedophilic side of Enning's caresses.  The guilt which Edmund subsequently feels after having committed his crime makes a bold and simple metaphor for the guilt felt by a nation when the full horror of the Holocaust had been exposed.  In a sense, Germany Year Zero is an ingenious allegory for the German people's corruption by - and subsequent rejection of - Nazism.

It is with its devastating climax that the film drives home its message most forcefully.  Shocking in its brutality and suddenness, it hammers the audience with an unpalatable truth: the ones who would suffer most as a result of the scourge of Nazism would be the German people themselves.   Understandably, it was not a sentiment that the world was prepared to share at the time, and this would account for the film's lukewarm response from the public. Far less successful than Rossellini's previous two films, Germany Year Zero soon fell into obscurity and remained virtually forgotten for decades.

The film clearly meant a great deal to its director, who dedicated it to his young son, who died just before he film was completed.  It is impossible to know for sure the extent of Rossellini's inner torment in making this film, which, by accident or design, ends up with no less an aim than trying to rehabilitate the Germany people in the eyes of an unforgiving world.  The fact that it still has such a strong impact more than half a century on is testament to its director's great personal courage and even greater compassion for his fellow man.

Film Synopsis

In the aftermath of World War II, a devastated Germany struggles to begin afresh.  The plight of 11-year old Edmund is typical of what people all over the country have to endure.  Living in a cramped apartment, he must spend all day trying to find money and food to keep his family from starvation.  Whilst Edmund runs errands and gets involved with black marketers and adolescent crooks, his sister Eva turns to prostitution.  This they must do to feed their bed-ridden father and elder brother, a former Nazi soldier who is hiding from the authorities through fear of arrest.  One day, Edmund meets one of his old school teachers, Herr Enning, who, having lost his job, pimps for child prostitutes.  A disciple of Nazi philosophy, Enning impresses on Edmund the need for the weak to die in order that the strong can prosper.  Later, when his father's illness takes a turn for the worse, Edmund recalls Enning's words and secretly obtains some poison...