Germany, Year Zero
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''Germany, Year Zero'' () is a 1948 film directed by
Roberto Rossellini Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini (8 May 1906 – 3 June 1977) was an Italian film director, screenwriter and producer. He was one of the most prominent directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing to the movement with films such a ...
, and is the final film in Rossellini's unofficial war film trilogy, following ''
Rome, Open City ''Rome, Open City'' (), also released as ''Open City'', is a 1945 Italian Italian neorealism, neorealist war film, war drama film directed by Roberto Rossellini and co-written by Sergio Amidei, Celeste Negarville and Federico Fellini. Set in Rom ...
'' and '' Paisà''. ''Germany Year Zero'' takes place in
Allied-occupied Germany The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II, from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Nazi Germany was stripped of its sov ...
, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and during the
Allied invasion of Italy The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allies of World War II, Allied Amphibious warfare, amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign (World War II), Italian campaign of World War II. T ...
, respectively. As in many neorealist films, Rossellini used mainly local, non-professional actors. He filmed on locations in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
and intended to convey the reality in Germany the year after its near total destruction in
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. It contains dramatic images of bombed out Berlin and of the human struggle for survival following the destruction of
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
. When explaining his ideas about realism in an interview, he said, "realism is nothing other than the artistic form of truth."


Plot

Twelve-year-old Edmund Köhler lives in devastated, Allied-occupied Berlin with his ailing, bedridden father and his adult siblings, Eva and Karl-Heinz. Eva manages to obtain cigarettes by going out with soldiers of the Allied forces, but she resists others' expectations to
prostitute Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-pe ...
herself. Karl-Heinz is the older son who fought in the war and is a burden to the struggling family, refusing to register with the police and get a ration card because he is afraid of what would happen if they found out he fought to the bitter end. The Köhlers and others have been assigned to the apartment home of the Rademachers by the housing authority, much to Mr. Rademacher's irritation. Edmund does what he can for his family, trying to find work and selling a scale for Mr. Rademacher on the
black market A black market is a Secrecy, clandestine Market (economics), market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality, or is not compliant with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services who ...
. By chance, Edmund meets Herr Henning, his former school teacher, who still remains a Nazi at heart. Henning gives him a recording of
Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
to sell to the occupying soldiers, entrusting him to the more experienced Jo and Christl. Henning gives Edmund 10
marks Marks may refer to: Business * Mark's, a Canadian retail chain * Marks & Spencer, a British retail chain * Collective trade marks A collective trademark, collective trade mark, or collective mark is a trademark owned by an organization (such ...
for his work. Afterward, Edmund tags along as the young man Jo steals 40 marks from a woman by pretending to sell her a bar of soap. Jo gives Edmund some of his stolen potatoes and leaves the inexperienced boy with Christl, whom another member of their gang describes as a mattress that dispenses cigarettes. After Mr. Köhler takes a turn for the worse, Henning tells Edmund that life is cruel and that the weak should be sacrificed so that the strong can survive. A kindly doctor manages to get Mr. Köhler admitted to a hospital, where he receives much more plentiful and healthy food. This temporarily relieves some of the pressure on his family. When Edmund goes to see his father, the old man bemoans his misery. He tells his son that he has considered suicide but lacks the courage to carry it out. He says that he is a burden and that it would be better if he were dead. Edmund steals some poison while no one is looking. A few days later, the father is discharged and returns home. Edmund poisons his tea just before police raid the apartment and Karl-Heinz finally turns himself in. The father dies while his elder son is in custody. Everyone assumes the death is due to malnutrition and sickness. When Karl-Heinz returns, he is crushed by the news. A disturbed Edmund wanders the city. He turns first to Christl, but she is busy with young men and has no time for or interest in a youngster. He goes to Henning and confesses that he did as the schoolteacher had suggested, murdering his father, but Henning protests that he never told the boy to kill anyone. When Edmund tries to join younger children in a street game of soccer, they reject him. He ascends the ruins of a bombed out building, and watches from a hole in the wall as they take his father's coffin away across the street. Finally, after hearing his sister call for him, he jumps from the building to his death.


Cast

* Edmund Moeschke as Edmund Köhler (as Edmund Meschke) *
Ernst Pittschau Ernst Pittschau (5 October 1883 – 2 June 1951) was a German stage actor, stage and film actor. Biography Pittschau, whose father's name was also named Ernst Pittschau, a stage actor, received an education in business and had a brief career sel ...
as Mr. Köhler * Ingetraud Hinze as Eva Köhler (as Ingetraud Hinz) * Franz-Otto Krüger as Karl-Heinz Köhler (as Franz Grüger) * Erich Gühne as Herr Henning, the (former) teacher


Production


Pre-production

Rossellini visited Berlin in March 1947 with a vague idea of making this film. Rossellini then returned to Rome and secured funding for the film from the French company Union Générale Cinématographique and his friends Salvo D'Angelo and Alfredo Guarini. He also got equipment and crew members from the German company Sadfi. Rossellini then returned to Berlin in July 1947 to continue research for the film and select a suitable cast.


Casting

As was his usual custom, Rossellini cast the film with non-professionals that he met on the street. Rossellini found Ernst Pittschau sitting on the front steps of a retirement home and discovered that he had been a silent film actor forty years earlier. He saw former ballet dancer Ingetraud Hinze standing in a food line and was struck with the look of despair on her face. Franz-Otto Krüger came from a family of academics and had been imprisoned by the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
during the war. Other smaller parts were cast with such people as a former
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...
general, an ex-wrestler, a literature and art history professor, a model and a group of children that were bored of living on the streets.Gallagher. p. 240. For the lead role of Edmund, Rossellini wanted to find a young German boy who physically resembled his recently deceased son Romano Rossellini. After auditioning several young boys, Rossellini went to a performance of the Barlay circus one night to see the elephants. There he saw an eleven-year-old acrobat named Edmund Meschke and immediately asked Meschke to audition for him. Rossellini combed Meschke's hair to resemble his son and, amazed at the physical resemblance, immediately cast him in the lead role. The finished film began with the title "This film is dedicated to the memory of my son Romano. — Roberto Rossellini"


Filming

Shooting began on 15 August 1947 with no formal script and Rossellini instructing the actors to improvise their dialogue. Rossellini directed the film in French and had to depend on Max Colpet to translate for him throughout shooting. While filming on location in the streets of Berlin, Rossellini was amazed by the indifference to a film crew from people on the streets who were far too preoccupied with attempting to get food and survive. When Rossellini went to Rome for a week in the middle of shooting to spend time with his then mistress
Anna Magnani Anna Maria Magnani (; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Academy Award-winning Italian actress.Obituary ''Variety Obituaries, Variety'', 3 October 1973, pg. 47 She was known for her explosive acting and earthy, realistic portrayals of ...
, Carlo Lizzani directed some scenes in his absence. In mid-September location shooting in Berlin wrapped after 40 days and the production moved to Rome on 26 September 1947 to film the interior scenes. When the German actors arrived in Rome they had to wait until November to resume filming because the film's sets had not been built. By November the previously malnourished Germans had gained a noticeable amount of weight while in Rome and had to be put on crash diets so as to retain continuity with their earlier scenes. After filming in Rome was complete most of the German actors didn't want to go back to Berlin and a few ran away to the Italian countryside. The film's final budget was $115,000.Gallagher. p. 244.


Reception

This film was in many ways vastly different from Rossellini's previous neorealism films, in that it was mostly shot in a studio and used rear screen projections for the Berlin scenes. Many critics who had previously championed Rossellini condemned the film for being melodramatic and disappointingly unrealistic. Rossellini stated that he wanted to "tell a story of a child, of an innocent creature which a distorted 'utopian' education induced to commit murder in the belief that he was performing a heroic gesture. But a feeble light of morality is not yet extinguished in him; driven by those small gleams of conscious, confused, he commits suicide."Wakeman, John. ''World Film Directors, Volume 2.'' H. W. Wilson Company. 1987. p. 962. Jean Georges Auriol called it hasty and superficial. Andre Bazin called it "not a movie but a sketch, a rough draft of a work Rossellini hasn't given us." However, ''L'Écran français'' called it revolutionary, and
Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...
said it was "the most beautiful Italian film" he had ever seen. Rossellini said that "I don't think it's possible to say more bad things about a film than were said about ''Germany Year Zero''." Most Germans disliked the film's negative and pessimistic attitude. The film was first screened in Germany in 1952 at a brief Munich film club screening and was not seen again until it was shown on German TV in 1978. In 1949 Austrian film critic Hans Habe called it "a terrifying film...not artistically, but because it would be terrifying if the world saw the new Germany as Rossellini does." It premiered in New York in September 1949 and was negatively compared to '' Bicycle Thieves''.
Bosley Crowther Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (July 13, 1905 – March 7, 1981) was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for ''The New York Times'' for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though some ...
said that the film had "a strange emptiness of genuine feeling."Gallagher. p. 336. Nevertheless it won the
Golden Leopard The Golden Leopard () is the top prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, an international film festival held annually in Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. Directors in the process of getting an international reputation are allowed to b ...
and the Best Director awards at the
Locarno International Film Festival The Locarno International Film Festival is a major international film festival, held annually in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narr ...
in 1948.


References


Further reading

* Serceau, Michel. ''Roberto Rossellini''. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1986. * Guarner, Jose L. ''Roberto Rossellini''. Trans. Elizabeth Cameron. New York: Praeger, 1970. * Brunette, Peter. ''Roberto Rossellini''. New York:
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1987. * Rossellini, Roberto. ''My Method: Writings and Interviews''. Adriano Aprà, ed. Trans: Annapaola Cancogni. New York : Marsilio Publishers, 1992.


External links

* * *
''Germany Year Zero: The Humanity of the Defeated''
an essay by
Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for '' The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to ...
at the
Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...
{{Authority control 1948 films 1940s German-language films Italian black-and-white films Films set in Germany Films set in Berlin Films shot in Germany Films directed by Roberto Rossellini Golden Leopard winners Italian neorealist films 1948 drama films Films about patricide Films about children Films about suicide Films about Nazis Italian drama films Films scored by Renzo Rossellini 1940s Italian films