Germany, Year Zero (1948)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Absolutely the worst movie.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

it is the right choice to admire it from the artistic perspective. but this represents one of many options. and, maybe, the useful way to discover this special film is the reflection of near reality. not only in the context of the WW II. because the message remains painful because it is a slice of contemporary reality. because the purposes - survive and need to impose the rules against society rules is the same. nothing different. nothing out of well known forms. and this does a gem of neo-realism more than a good example of cinema. but support for see , in profound manner, the near every day reality. to understand. the war, the survive, the situation of a boy among the shadows of war, the meanings of year zero for the conflict zones, the hope as more than noble emotion.

***SPOILERS*** Italian director Reborto Rossellini's film depicting post WWII Germany that was a living hell for the German people who survived the war. It's been estimated that as much as 10 million Germans died,mostly from starvation and disease, during the five years after the German surrender in May 1945. A shocking number which was almost if not more then those who died during the entire length,some six years, of WWII. It's Berlin Germany in the Summer of 1947 and life is hell for the German people who live there. Bearly surviving and with death and starvation staring them in the face many Berliners have to steal get involved in the black market as well as prostitute themselves in order to get food and medicine to survive. The Kohel family is one of many whom the movie "Germany Year Zero" focuses on.With the head of the family Mr. Kohler,Ernst Pittschau, practically on his death bed it's up to his two sons 13 year old Edmund, Edmund Meschke, and 25 year old former Afrika Corps infantryman Karl-Heinz, Franz-Otto Krugr, to bring home the bacon. There's also Eva Kohler, Ingetraud Hinez, who hangs out at the city's bars and nightclubs frequented by US and UK servicemen in order for them to buy her not only a drink but a square meal that she can take home and share with her on the verge of starving to death family.With Karl-Heinz afraid to get a ration card and work permit in fear that his past as a German soldier who didn't surrender at the end of the war, that ended two years earlier, would be reviled and have him sent to a POW camp it's up to Edmund to go out and find work to support his family. It's Edmund's former teacher Herr Henning,Erich Guhne, who gets Edmund involved in the black market as well as puts Nazi or Darwinian like ideas, the survival of the fittest, into the young and impressionable German youths head that in the end turn out to be fatal for both him and his sickly dad Mr. Kolher. It's only later that Herr Henning realized what he did and tried to put the entire blame on Edmund who was just, like the Nazi leadership at the Nuremburg Trial claimed, following orders!***SPOILERS*** It was Edmund who thought that he was doing his near dead father a favor by slipping poison in his tea and putting him out of his misery as well as life who ended up paying the ultimate price for his action. By him jumping off a bombed out Berlin building to his death at the conclusion of the movie thus leaving the cruel world that he finds himself in as well as his remaining family members behind.P.S It was German first time actor Edmund Meschke's striking resemblance to the movie director Roberto Rossellni's recently deceased son Romano, who died in 1946 of appendicitis, that got him the leading part in the movie. In fact the film was dedicated to Rossellini's son in its ending credits.

This movie is one of the three Rossellini's neo-realist movies that make the trilogy of war of his direction. The other two are "Roma Città Aperta" and "Paisà". Despite having won the First Prize at the 1948 Locarno Festival it was a commercial half-failure. In 1947 in Berlin, Germany, a city destroyed by the war, full of ruins and rubbish everywhere, with people and families living in awful conditions of poverty and housing squalor, a 13 year old boy resorts to petty thefts and tricks to get money and food to help to support his family composed by him plus an old and ailing father, a sister who wins money at night by going to dance and drink in nightclubs with the allied men and a brother who lives half-hidden and unregistered for fear of being arrested and sent to a prisoners camp since he had fought there till the end of the war. The best of this movie is its documentary value since it shows in a very realistic way the images of a Berlin almost totally destroyed by the war and the life conditions of its population. The story is not bad itself but in the end it introduces an unnecessary too dramatic ending by the boy poisoning his father to death partly out of pity and to put an end to his suffering and partly to alleviate the family of the burden he represented. It's however one of the best movies of the Italian neo-realist school that flourished in the forties and fifties of last century.

Young Edmund and his family live in the bombed out ruins of post-war Germany. Cramped into one house with four other families, without electricity or food they struggle to survive. His mother did not survive the war, his father is slowly dying, and his brother is in hiding to escape the Russian camps. Since Edmund is too young to legally work, they all depend on his older sister to survive. Edmund is troubled by the burden he puts on his sister, trying to be the man his brother does not have the guts to be and thus he is out looking for ways to make money. A former teacher (and possible paedophile) helps him make some quick cash by selling Nazi memorabilia to American soldiers. The money is not enough and Edmund's father is getting worse. Following a conversation with his former teacher, Edmund tries to do the right thing and out of love, poisons his father to set him free. The images of the real life landscapes are extremely powerful, and young Edmund Moeschke gives one of the best performances I have seen from a child actor, the rest of the cast and dialogues are a bit stiff at parts. An honest and shocking portrayal of the best and worst of humanity. (10/10)