avik-basu1889 'Germany Year Zero' was the final film in Roberto Rosellini's acclaimed 'War Trilogy'. This particular film distinguishes itself from the preceding two due to the fact that the focus shifts from the lives of Italians to the lives of Germans, after the end of WWII. 'Germany Year Zero' might be the bleakest and most depressing of the three films in the trilogy. In 'Rome, Open City', even with the struggle and oppression, there is a clear celebration of togetherness and the power of human conviction, resistance and idealism in the face of torture. In 'Paisan' underneath the melancholic exterior, there is an intimate exploration of friendship and brotherhood that transcends geographical and linguistic barriers. Although there are some intimate moments of tenderness involving the Kohler family in 'Germany Year Zero', but these moments get drowned under a constant and inescapably thick layer of hopelessness and doom. The film's opening credit sequence is accompanied by extended tracking shots of Berlin ravaged by war. We get these chilling moving images of completely destroyed homes, endless ruins and huge piles of rubble everywhere. This haunting imagery of the ruined Berlin reminded me of Werner Herzog's 'Lessons of Darkness'. Rossellini evokes this visual aura where the viewer feels like an outsider getting a bird's eye view of a desolate, long deserted alien world that has undergone complete destruction. He again uses a similar overhead tracking shot of ravaged Berlin in a scene towards the middle of the film with Hitler's speech playing over the visuals which adds a haunting and ironic vibe to the moving images.The film's deathly hopelessness is epitomised in a way by the fact that the first scene of the film is set in a graveyard. There is very little in terms of levity or intimacy in the film. Rossellini is intent on capturing the struggle and pain of the people of Berlin, but I think he also made a conscious effort to keep moments of sweetness few and far between in order to reflect the bitter truth of post war Germany without the ornamentation of sentimentality. Another very important theme being explored in 'Germany Year Zero' is the theme of lost innocence and premature adulthood. This theme connects 'Germany Year Zero' with Tarkovsky's 'Ivan's Childhood'. One can see a bit of Edmund in Ivan and vice-versa. Edmund has to work tirelessly to help out his family. He goes out in the streets looking to do anything that he can so that he can earn something for his family without once thinking about his own needs. This premature loss of childhood is depicted in one scene towards the end where Edmund requests a group of young kids playing football in the streets to let him play with them, but they ditch him and he walks away alone, it's a heartbreaking scene, but it's immensely poignant.The character of Karl-Heinz symbolised all the ordinary Germans who supported Hitler back in the day and now after the war find themselves cheated and helpless. Unfortunately their acknowledgment of the guilt and past mistakes has come far too late. Rossellini also tries to distinguish between the ordinary Germans who acknowledged their guilt for supporting the Nazi party in the past and the people who continued to believe in the Nazi philosophies even after their defeat. There are a few characters in the film who are being forced to live in the post Nazi Germany while still holding onto their Nazi beliefs. However this is where I think the film stumbles by using a very unnecessary angle of pedophilia. The character of Mr.Henning could have just been a Nazi sympathiser struggling with his ideals and his identity in a post Nazi Germany which could have been a complex element in the narrative and also very compelling, but instead he is given this silly pedophilia element which undercuts and cheapens the scope of his character in the narrative. A similar treatment was also present in 'Rome, Open City' where Nazism gets equated with homosexuality(which is not just cheap, but also very offensive in today's context). I would've loved to have a more mature exploration and critique of Nazism.Visually, the film looks great. One can see the gradual development in Rossellini's visual style over the course of the three films in this trilogy. There are many examples of swift and intricate camera movement present in 'Germany Year Zero'. Rossellini shoots the interior scenes using long takes with the actors close to the camera to build up the claustrophobia. He juxtaposes that approach by using wide angle photography in the street scenes to make Edmund look especially tiny in the midst of the ravaged Berlin cityscape. However there is a weakness present in Rossellini's direction that was present in 'Paisan' too. 'Rome, Open City' had some powerful actors like Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi and they gave great performances. However it is clear from 'Paisan' and 'Germany Year Zero' that Rossellini at least at the beginning of his career found it hard to get good performances out of amateurs. There are many scenes in this film where the performances are extremely stiff, wooden and unconvincing. In a film which inherently is emotionally demoralising, the sub-par performances can at times make it even more tough to connect with it from an emotional standpoint.'Germany Year Zero' is upsetting, and it won't inflate the balloons of hope in the minds of the viewer. But I think all that is intentional as Rossellini wanted the film to reflect the genuine depression and hopelessness which engulfed post war Germany. I admire the themes being explored which involves loss of innocence, the distinction between ordinary Germans and Nazis,etc. Although the treatment of the character of Mr.Henning with his Nazi loyalties gets cheapened and the acting at times becomes cringeworthy, I still think there are enough exceptional aspects to this film to admire and 'Germany Year Zero' is certainly a solid finale to this influential trilogy.

Richard von Lust 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.

sol ***SPOILERS*** Italian director Reborto Rossellini's film depicting post WWII Germany that was a living hell for the German people who survived the war. It's been estimated that as much as 10 million Germans died,mostly from starvation and disease, during the five years after the German surrender in May 1945. A shocking number which was almost if not more then those who died during the entire length,some six years, of WWII. It's Berlin Germany in the Summer of 1947 and life is hell for the German people who live there. Bearly surviving and with death and starvation staring them in the face many Berliners have to steal get involved in the black market as well as prostitute themselves in order to get food and medicine to survive. The Kohel family is one of many whom the movie "Germany Year Zero" focuses on.With the head of the family Mr. Kohler,Ernst Pittschau, practically on his death bed it's up to his two sons 13 year old Edmund, Edmund Meschke, and 25 year old former Afrika Corps infantryman Karl-Heinz, Franz-Otto Krugr, to bring home the bacon. There's also Eva Kohler, Ingetraud Hinez, who hangs out at the city's bars and nightclubs frequented by US and UK servicemen in order for them to buy her not only a drink but a square meal that she can take home and share with her on the verge of starving to death family.With Karl-Heinz afraid to get a ration card and work permit in fear that his past as a German soldier who didn't surrender at the end of the war, that ended two years earlier, would be reviled and have him sent to a POW camp it's up to Edmund to go out and find work to support his family. It's Edmund's former teacher Herr Henning,Erich Guhne, who gets Edmund involved in the black market as well as puts Nazi or Darwinian like ideas, the survival of the fittest, into the young and impressionable German youths head that in the end turn out to be fatal for both him and his sickly dad Mr. Kolher. It's only later that Herr Henning realized what he did and tried to put the entire blame on Edmund who was just, like the Nazi leadership at the Nuremburg Trial claimed, following orders!***SPOILERS*** It was Edmund who thought that he was doing his near dead father a favor by slipping poison in his tea and putting him out of his misery as well as life who ended up paying the ultimate price for his action. By him jumping off a bombed out Berlin building to his death at the conclusion of the movie thus leaving the cruel world that he finds himself in as well as his remaining family members behind.P.S It was German first time actor Edmund Meschke's striking resemblance to the movie director Roberto Rossellni's recently deceased son Romano, who died in 1946 of appendicitis, that got him the leading part in the movie. In fact the film was dedicated to Rossellini's son in its ending credits.

Apocalypse_Salem Young Edmund and his family live in the bombed out ruins of post-war Germany. Cramped into one house with four other families, without electricity or food they struggle to survive. His mother did not survive the war, his father is slowly dying, and his brother is in hiding to escape the Russian camps. Since Edmund is too young to legally work, they all depend on his older sister to survive. Edmund is troubled by the burden he puts on his sister, trying to be the man his brother does not have the guts to be and thus he is out looking for ways to make money. A former teacher (and possible paedophile) helps him make some quick cash by selling Nazi memorabilia to American soldiers. The money is not enough and Edmund's father is getting worse. Following a conversation with his former teacher, Edmund tries to do the right thing and out of love, poisons his father to set him free. The images of the real life landscapes are extremely powerful, and young Edmund Moeschke gives one of the best performances I have seen from a child actor, the rest of the cast and dialogues are a bit stiff at parts. An honest and shocking portrayal of the best and worst of humanity. (10/10)