Germany Year Zero

Germany Year Zero

Germany Year Zero was the final film in Robert Rossellini’s war trilogy. The first film of the trilogy, Rome, Open City (1945) – which was also considered by many, the beginning of Italian Neo- Realism exposed the consequences of fascism and the second world war with just a camera that drifted around the ruins of the city streets. As distinct from Rome, Open City and Paisan (1946), the second film of the trilogy (which again was set in Italy), Rossellini set up his camera for Germany Year Zero in the heart of Berlin. The film tells the story of Edmund, a young boy who does his best to scrape a living for his family among the debris left over from Nazi Germany. In the process, the audience is taken on a long tour of the devastated city with Edmund, who wonders the streets on his own, lives on the streets and gets mixed up with all kinds of business on the streets. Rossellini strove always to depict the everyday and so to get as close as possible to ‘reality’. “If ever I happen to take a beautiful shot, I’ll throw it out in the cutting room, “ he apparently said. On the one hand, he also criticizes the moral collapse that fascism brought with it. The final shot of Germany Year Zero is perhaps one of the most hard-hitting blows of cinema ever. Senem Aytaç