Germany Year Zero
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Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero) is the final film in Roberto Rossellini's famed war movie trilogy (the first two being Rome, Open City and Paisan). Unlike the first two movies, Germany Year Zero follows its character's story in a post-war Germany instead of a post-war Italy. The ideas presented in the first two movies are not lost though. Rossellini wished to express the vile and unnatural elements of nazism and how it had corrupted German society. In keeping to his neorealist cinema (as like the first two movies) he chose real citizens of Berlin to act in a story about their post-war city. It is meant to convey the reality of the first year after fascism in Germany without movie making decadence and the technical aspects of film; rather Rossellini wanted the focus to be on the story of the people
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[edit] Story
The story follows a twelve year old boy, Edmund Koeler. Edmund lives with his ailing father and his brother and sister in a bombed out apartment building with five other families. His sister, Eva, is unjustly accused of prostituting herself to the Allied officers that now reign in Berlin. His brother, Karl-Heinz, has not stepped forward to register with the new police force because he is afraid of punishment for being a part of a Nazi regiment that fought the Allies to the bitter end.
While his family is preoccupied with these things, Edmund is mainly left to his own devices in order to survive and also in order to help his family survive as well, for without Karl-Heniz's registration with the authorities he cannot work. Edmund partakes in the black market that rules Berlin at this time and is cheated by an adult as well as a group of older children who are much more savvy to street life than Edmund who (at least for a time) manages to salvage some sense of childhood innocence. He is eventually corrupted by various forces resulting from the fallout of Nazi rule.
The group of teens are one such example. They inroduce him to scamming people and stealing and also introduce him to the adult vice of casual sex. Similarly, Mr. Enning (a former school teacher of Edmund's) also corrupts Edmund and represents the Nazi party more explicitly, for he still holds Nazi values and profits off selling Nazi artifacts on the blackmarket. He praises Edmund for joing the Hitler Youth when his father tried to get him exempt. In addition, he is harboring a Nazi general. Mr. Enning is also painted as being a homosexual and a pedophile, which Rossellini tried to express through showing his less than honorable intentions towards young Edmund, This is another outlet to express the evil element of Nazism. To an audience at the time, homosexuality would have been viewed as deviant; especially in the mostly Catholic western Europe. In fact, the Catholic Church was a present force in the first two films of the trilogy, but in Germany, Year Zero, Rossellini makes no reference to the Church as a chance for redemption.
This series of corruptive elements that come in contact with Edmund leads ultimately to the culmination of the embodiment of evil Nazism. After visiting Mr. Enning while looking for help, Edmund is told by his former teacher that his father should die because the weak die and the strong survive and that is the way life is. Edmund interpretes these words in an extreme manner (as the Nazi government had to a much greater extent) and procedes to poison his father in order to elieve his suffering and lift the burden placed on his family to take care of the sick aging man. Afterwards, Edmund is unable to bear the guilt of having done such a thing and throws himself out of a burned building across the street from where his family lives, falling to his death.
[edit] Interpretation
Though criticized for such a controversial ending by some, Rossellini has defended it with the argument that it's not about punishment for the crimes of the German government (and the German people) but it should be viewed as a hopeful ending. That in the death of Edmund, so too did the tainted morals imposed on him by the Nazi society in which he was raised die. This can be contrasted with Rome, Open City in which Marcello (the young hero) and his young playmates march down the hill toward Rome. They will be the new generation that will begin to forget and heal Europe. The opposite sentiment is found here; a child's death is what serves as a symbolic end to the era of fascism.
[edit] Social Significance
Like the other two flims in the trilogy Germany, Year Zero is a tale of morality and serves as a modern folk-tale for post-war Europe. It is not aesthetically pleasing in any certain way, and most of the dialogue is simple and often melodramatic. The significance of this film is not in the visual itself, but the ability of this (relatively) new art form to be used as a modern construction of a very old one. People needed these morality tales, these legends to start again in war-torn Europe. They needed to believe it was possible to put a death to the evil lack of morals fostered by the ideals of Nazi Germany and begin to heal the wounds resulting from this. They needed villains and heroes in order to create a myth that they could believe in in order to carry on and move forward to rebuild Europe and return to the values in once held.
[edit] Further reading
- Serceau, Michel. Roberto Rossellini. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1986.
- Guarner, Jose L. Trans. Elizabeth Cameron. New York: Praeger, 1970.
- Brunette, Peter. Roberto Rossellini. New York: Oxford University P, 1987.
