Germany, Year Zero: A Look at Post-WWII Germany

Few filmmakers have taken on the task of telling the stories of what the German people went through right after World War II. It's true that it's easy to look at the enemy and dehumanize him and not desire to empathize with him. After all, dehumanizing the people who almost took over the world and would have taken one's freedom makes it easier on others. It's much easier to hate rather than try to understand. Roberto Rossellini dared to take on the dubious task and succeeded with his Germany, Year Zero, the last film of his war trilogy (which includes Rome, Open City). As with most Italian Neorealist filmmakers of the time, Rossellini employed mostly amateur actors and filmed on location for the 1948 film. The first half of the movie actually has more of a newsreel, documentary look to it, with its long takes of war-ravaged Berlin.

The story focuses on an impoverished German family, the Kohlers, struggling to make ends meet in an apartment home owned by another better-off family, the Rademachers. There's the bedridden father, who persists that his eldest son, Karl-Heinz, register with the authorities after having fought in the German military to the end in order for him to get his food ration card. Karl-Heinz does not want to give himself up, as he feels he would have to, and his sister, Eva, is pressured by her friend to prostitute herself to men, which she refuses to do and instead only seeks the company of men to get cigarettes. Then there's Edmund, the main protagonist, who is the youngest and a twelve-year-old boy trying to find work, despite his age. The stress and constant struggling leads Edmund onto a dangerous path, forcing him to try to deal in the black market. He comes across his former schoolteacher, who seems to have pedophilic tendencies and is not so innocently interested in his former pupil. This strange and deceiving schoolteacher remains loyal to the Nazi party, and he is in possession of a record with a speech by Hitler, which he gives to the young boy so that he can try to sell it to American soldiers. When Edmund succeeds, he gives the money to the former schoolteacher, who gives Edmund a small cut of the profit. Edmund then spends a day and a night with a teenage boy and girl who have experience swindling people out of money.

Edmund's father insists that the family would be better off without him, as he thinks of himself as a weighing burden that holds his children back. He is often heard saying how much better it would be if he would just die. His children would rather not hear such talk, but it eventually affects Edmund, pushing him to make a grave mistake....

All in all, the film is a bleak, depressing look at the lives of people devastated by war and poverty. Although Rossellini himself would hold that the last installment of his war trilogy was an objective depiction of the German people, the film clearly paints a picture of sympathy and compassion. Germany is seen in a different light, which no other filmmaker dared to confront us with at the time, and there is still some difficulty in the present day to confront the world with it. It also depicts guilt and its destructive, dooming nature; its ability to condemn the individual suffering from it more than any outsider could. And perhaps the boy, with all his anguish and self-condemnation, represents an entire nation suffering from anguish and self-condemnation. The title of the film underlines the very turmoil a nation right out of a war was dealing with and its struggle to rebuild and rehabilitate. After the war, Germany was to start from scratch.

Rating: 4/5 stars