Down but not out in Berlin

| Wednesday June 13, 2012 00:00

This is an amazing movie by the great Italian director of neo-realism, Roberto Rossellini, with music by his brother Renzo Rossellini following a script by Max Kolp. It is the third in a trio of films made by Rossellini on the futility of war and its aftermath. It was filmed in 1947 in a devastated Berlin. The actors are all Germans who have had their voices dubbed into Italian. At first this may seem strange, but after awhile it works.

Germany has been so badly bombed that it seems to be more rubble and collapsing buildings than standing edifices. In the midst of this graveyard of a city reduced to its knees, with conditions worse than they ever were during the war, people struggle to survive. Because of the loss of space families now live in one room where before they had an apartment or more space in houses.

Edmund (acted by Edmund Moeschke; he was found working in a circus), a blonde, 12-year-old German boy, has ceased schooling and become part of the key to his family's survival. They have taken a room in a flat now occupied by multiple families that is jealously guarded by Frau and Herr Rademaker (Heidi BlŠnkner and Hans Sangen) and their daughter (Babsi Schultz-Reckewell). The building is still standing, but it is in a precarious condition due to the extensive bombing.

Edmund's father (Ernst Pittschau) is sick and cannot do much to help his family. During the war he had tried to keep Edmund out of the Kindergruppe or the Hitler Youth. Edmund's older sister Eva (Ingetraud Hinze) can't find work, but makes a little money by socialising with the new occupying soldiers along with her more forthright friend Alexandra (Alexandra Many). Edmund's older brother Karl-Heinz (Franz-Otto KrŸger) served as a soldier in the war. He has a survivor's guilt and a war-shocked veteran's fear of being accused of war crimes. He therefore refuses to register with the police as required. This means that the four of them have only three ration cards and the meagre food they can get is not enough to go around. Not being registered also means no work permit, therefore no income to be able to even purchase food on the black market.  Edmund rises to the challenge, trying to find work and food wherever and however he can. He gets a job digging graves in a cemetery, but loses it because of his age and that he has no work permit. Horsemeat from a dead horse? Coal from passing trucks?

Anything will help survive. When by accident he meets a former teacher, Herr Henning (Erich GŸhne), he seeks help from him, but Henning is a pederast and unrepentant Nazi. Still Edmund is desperate. He will even try to sell, for Henning, an old recording of Adolf Hitler's speeches (voice of Adolf Hitler) to American soldiers.

Germany Year Zero may refer to the beginning of the two new divided Germanys, East and West. To Rossellini, Edmund is symbolic of the desolation that gripped post-war Europe. John Primavera in Fear Eats the Soul writes that, 'Edmund isn't just a child, we learn. But more so, a country.  A nation bombed into rubble and tasting its own ashes. Stripped of everything of any value and reduced to zero'.  Rossellini's personal tragedy, his loss in 1946 of his nine-year-old son Romano to a burst appendix, could have fuelled his vision of Germany Year Zero. It is brutally realistic, a stark, nihilistic portrait, the kind that today is made in science-fiction fantasy films of some future time in space and total destruction with one person, a survivor, who may possibly turn things around.

Edmund moves in a devastated wasteland and for him there is little hope.  As a film about war and its aftermath, Germany Year Zero is a classic. Rossellini's American producers backed the first two films in his trilogy on the futility of war, Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisˆ (1946). The French government mainly paid for Germany Year Zero. Interestingly another filmmaker who was inspired by Germany Year Zero is Franois Truffaut who found it a film that approaches adolescence devoid of sentimentality. He says it inspired him when he made his famous The 400 Blows. Germany Year Zero is 71 minutes long, it is in black and white, and is rated PG. It was filmed in Berlin over a few months in mid-1947 and finished in Rome by January 1948.

The director is Roberto Rossellini who developed the story with Carlo Lizzani, while the final script is credited to Max Kolp. The original and haunting music is by Renzo Rossellini, Roberto Rossellini's brother. The cinematographer is Robert Juillard. The editor is Eraldo Da Roma. The art director is Piero Filippone. The film is dedicated to Rossellini's son Romano. Edmund Moeschke was partially selected for the film because he looked like Romano.