Germany, Year Zero (German: Deutschland im Jahre Null) is a 1948 film directed by Roberto Rossellini, and is the final film in Rossellini’s unofficial war film trilogy, following Rome, Open City and Paisà. Germany Year Zero takes place in post-war Germany, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and during the Allied invasion of Italy, respectively.
As in many neorealist films, Rossellini used mainly local, non-professional actors. He filmed on locations in Berlin and intended to convey the reality in Germany the year after its near total destruction in World War II. It contains dramatic images of bombed out Berlin and of the human struggle for survival following the destruction of the Third Reich. When explaining his ideas about realism in an interview, he said, “realism is nothing other than the artistic form of truth.”
Plot
Thirteen-year-old Edmund Kohler lives in devastated, post-World War II 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 resists her friends’ advice to prostitute 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 what would happen if they found out he fought to the bitter end. The Kohlers 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. He meets by chance Herr Henning, his former school teacher, who still remains a Nazi at heart. Henning, who exhibits what may be interpreted as a pedophilic interest in Edmund, gives him a record of Hitler to sell to the occupying soldiers, entrusting him to the more experienced Jo and Christl. Henning gives Edmund 10 marks 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. That night, after giving Edmund some of his stolen potatoes, Jo leaves the inexperienced lad with Christl, whom another member of their gang describes as a mattress that dispenses cigarettes.
When the father has an attack, a kindly doctor manages to get him admitted to a hospital, where he receives much more plentiful and healthy food. This relieves some of the pressure on his family temporarily. When Edmund goes to see him, the father talks of how he is such a burden and that it would be better if he were dead. Edmund steals some poison while a nurse is away.
After four days, the father is discharged and returns home. Edmund poisons his tea. When the police raid the apartment, Karl-Heinz finally turns himself in. The father dies after his elder son is taken away. Everyone assumes it was due to malnutrition and sickness.
A disturbed Edmund wanders the city. He turns first to Christ, 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 he never told him to kill anyone, only that the weak should perish so that the strong can survive. When Edmund tries to join younger children in a street game of football, 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 out of the hole to his death.
Cast
- Edmund Moeschke as Edmund Kohler (as Edmund Meschke)
- Ernst Pittschau as Mr. Kohler
- Ingetraud Hinze as Eva Kohler (as Ingetraud Hinz)
- Franz-Otto Krüger as Karl-Heinz Kohler (as Franz Grüger)
- Erich Gühne as Herr Henning – Il maestro
Cinema Neorealismo Italiano 