IMDb user comments for
Germania anno zero (1948)

advertisement

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 3:

[1] [2] [3]

Index

27 comments in total

---

24 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Grim and accurate, 25 enero 2005

Author: Gene Marsh de United States

I must confess to a lingering fascination of the condition of Germany, and the German peoples, immediately following WWII. The country, of course, was broken - destroyed - in ruins. More importantly, so were the people. The real life stories I have read speak to so many aspects of their condition: shame, starvation, disbelief, shock of the revelations of the evil of their own doing, and despair. Always despair. They are stories of how the human spirit can overcome the most horrific nightmares and conditions.

This movie drills to the heart of many of those issues, sometimes subtly, sometimes brazenly. Rossellini was never better.

I consider this movie to be a must view on two levels: First, it is quite frankly one of the best moves ever made. Easy words to throw around, and said too often about too many films. Those words apply here. Second, it is a must view for the understanding it can provide of what the world - particularly Germany and Europe - were like after WWII. It belongs to a small suite of movies (such as Schindler's List) that show real insight, a true view into the world during this bleak time in history.

---

17 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
A document of its time, 25 agosto 2002
Author: John Simpson (post@jandesimpson.wanadoo.co.uk) de Hastings, England

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The art of cinema reached emotional and technical maturity at the same time as the cataclysmic events of World War II were unfolding. War shaped the content of much of cinema's finest period whether as direct historical reconstruction, distortion for propaganda purposes or simply by feeding the necessity for romantic escapism. By the end of the war Italian neo-realism was entering its great period. A nation that had suffered much looked unflinchingly at its society. It is not therefore surprising that an Italian, Roberto Rossellini, was able to empathise so acutely with the plight of the German people in their zero year following the collapse of the Third Reich. Amid the rubble of Berlin, 12 year old Edmund does what little he can to earn trifling amounts to help feed his family including a chronically sick father. They are not popular with their neighbours, as an ill man is an encumbrance and there is still a residue of the Nazi dogma of the survival of the fittest abroad. Something of this eventually gets twisted in Edmund's immature mind causing him to embark on the terrible path of patricide. Innocence is thus destroyed in a particularly horrifying way. "Germany Year Zero" is as bleakly pessimistic and despairing as any film to come out in the immediate aftermath of the war. Other films, equally grim, such as Wadja's "Kanal", Sanders-Brahms's "Germany, Pale Mother" and Klimov's "Come and See" are recollections after gaps in time. The strength of Rossellini's work is its documentary immediacy. The bombs have all but fallen and trams have started to run again. The graves being dug at the beginning look as if they are for real and the horse that has collapsed in the street that has excited a group of gathering carnivores could have died moments before the camera arrives. "Germany Year Zero" is neither comforting nor uplifting, but it looks so real, it had to be.

---

15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Tenaz!!, 15 febrero 2003

Author: Edgar Soberón Torchia (estorchia@gmail.com) de Panama

After watching "Roma, città aperta" in the 1970's and "Paisà" in the late 1980's, I finally saw "Germania anno zero", the last part of Roberto Rossellini's war trilogy. Compared to the first two installments, they all share the immediacy of the war, but this time Rossellini is more direct: no subplots, only a handful of characters, all of whom move around young Edmund (Edmund Mëschke), the 12-year-old German boy who lives in a miserable apartment with five other families, and who maintains his sick father, his brother who was a Nazi soldier and his sister, who is close to becoming a prostitute. Edmund pretends he's old enough to work, but when he's denied that opportunity, he steals, sells items in the black market, or allows his former teacher to caress him lasciviously for a few marks. What's more impressive in this film is the lack of sentimentality – compared to De Sica's children movies- and the lack of preaching: when one character does preach, he would have better stayed shut! I think that many scholars are no longer interested in the aesthetics of Italian Neorealism, but–in my appreciation- Roberto Rossellini is one of the big names in the history of cinema, far more important than other filmmakers who are idolized, and his war films are more interesting to me than overrated later works as "Voyage in Italy".

---

12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
totally true and gut wrenching, 14 junio 2002
Author: shoolaroon de usa

this is at times an incredibly painful movie to watch as rosselini portrays the struggle of ordinary germans to survive the devastation of post war berlin and rebuild their lives. the protagonist is a 12 year old boy whose childhood has been stolen by war - he tries to live up to the responsibilities that are forced on him but it's all too much for a skinny little boy to handle. the desperation depicted in this movie really shows the horrors of war for all people - even the ones who initiate it and lose. this is a remarkably compassionate film - i cannot recommend it highly enough. 10 stars.

---

9 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Rossellini's great post-war, neo-realist masterpiece, 31 julio 2000

Author: berlinkubaner de Berlin &S.Paulo

This masterpiece, filmed while the action and subject matter of the film, was at its most intense, is a must see. Featuring non-professional actors, in the neo-realist style which defined post-war Italian cinema, you will experience a lyrical view of Germany, actually devastated Berlin. This is how it was at Hour Zero, or "Anno Zero" when new currency was introduced, and the economy started again from scratch with each German receiving the same (very little) cash to rebuild their lives, and indeed their country. The film has magnificent scenes including the voice of Adolf Hitler coming from a record player among the ruins of the Chancellery, deaths in gutted buildings, and several especially poignant scenes of the young boy who has known nothing but misery during his few years of life, yet continues his fight to survive.

---

8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Edmund is Germany, 28 abril 2003
Author: catalfu001 de Usa

Edmund represents Germany during this time. Edmund, who walks about with his head down and his half shut eyes looking at the ground in sadness, represents a nation trying to rebuild, and to begin again with very little money and resources. Edmund's life is one of confusion, hardship and rejection. I feel that at this time people of Germany felt confused, and saw hardship unlike any other. It is also my thought that the rejection that Edmund felt throughout the film symbolizes what the nation of Germany had felt and seen from other nations. I feel that the ending of the movie is very powerful in the fact that it shows death and life. Edmund's jump to death can be seen as the death of a nation and the beginning of a new nation. With this being said, Germany Year Zero is statement of history and the politics of Germany.

---

9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Great neo-realist movie, 9 diciembre 2004
Author: michahaen de paris, france

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Germany Year Zero is one of the rare films about the immediate after-war in Germany. It depicts a family who lives in the ruins of Berlin. Their drama is hunger and misery, the problem is recurrent, never solved. The father is too ill to help out. The older brother, an ex nazi, hides from the police. The sister goes to the dancing to meet French and Americans. It is finally Edmund, only 12 years old, the youngest of them all, who really struggles to improve things and find food and money. At one point he starts following bad advice and the tragedy begins. What Germany Year Zero shows us is how adults, unaware of it, can influence a child into making drastic and dramatic decisions. As the movie goes on, he becomes more and more isolated, physically and morally. The last scene is very poetic and at the same time tragic : one minute you see him playing in the ruins like a child, kicking a stone with his shoe, playing with a piece of junk, sliding down a beam, the next minute he puts an end to his life. To be seen by all lovers of neo-realism. With some similar themes I also recommend Visconti's Rocco and his Brothers and The Damned.

---

9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
The Führer of Films!, 26 abril 2004

Author: Kristopher Summa (kristophersumma@hotmail.com) de Kent, Ohio US

An intricate web was weaved with the lives of post World War Two's deprived people amongst the reins of Berlin, Germany and that of mans ultimate struggle for survival. That web is the work of Italian film maker, Roberto Rossellini. His final installation of the war trilogy, beginning with Open City (1945), follow by Paisà (1946), ended with an amazing expression of talent from behind the camera and in front. What is not to be forgotten from the film Germany Year Zero (1947-8) is that time in history when people lived `as if tragedy was natural'. We watch as the social infection of survival of the fittest works its way into the life of a twelve year old, German boy named Edmund Koeler (played by Edmund Moeschke). The challenge of survival begins its grip on young Edmund as a result of dealing with life in post-war consequences. The simply desperate life of Edmund and his family was further brought to life with the cinematography that gives shape to the psychological states of it characters through stylized visuals land marking the film noir derived from German expressionism. Along with several dehumanizing high angle shots, the shadowy look into this family's life makes for a powerful film, as well as a powerful message.

---

5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
3rd part of Rossellini's neorealist trilogy, 6 marzo 2005

Author: schedule491 de NYC

This is the third film in Rossellini's war trilogy; the other 2 films are Roma citta' aperta (Rome Open City) and Paisa. I thought this film was of the same quality as Paisa. Rossellini continues to use the same sort of staging and neorealist style as before. It's interesting to see the footage of (mostly destroyed) Berlin... It's interesting to see how a director from a country that was once allied with Nazi Germany decides to portray postwar life in Germany. A bleak film, but very Rossellini-ish: children as important characters, sexual perversion equated with moral turpitude, the telescoped-in time frame. As in his first film, Roma citta' aperta, Rossellini provides an intense story. Neorealism can sound dry--and some of the neorealist films were rather depressing and not exactly fun to watch--but this film is definitely more than watchable.

---

6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Only the Strong Survive, 12 octubre 2007

Author: Claudio Carvalho de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In 1947, an ordinary German family fights to survive in a wrecked Berlin after the end of World War II. The father (Ernst Pittschau) is very sick, incapable to work and bring food home; his older son, Karl-Heinz (Franz Grüger), is a former soldier hiding from the police, afraid of the consequences of fighting in war; his daughter Eva (Ingetraud Hinz) is waiting for her boyfriend Wolf and goes to the clubs in the night to bring valuable cigarettes and minor gifts to contribute with the survival of her family; and the twelve years old boy Edmund (Edmund Meschke) wanders through the destructed city trying to find work or some food to reduce the starvation of his family. When Edmund meets his former teacher, the pedophile Herr Enning (Erich Gühne), he misunderstands his Nazi speech about the survival of the stronger and poisons the food of his father, leading the hopeless boy to a desperate final solution.

I have just watched "Germania Anno Zero" on DVD and this masterpiece is still very impressive even when you see for the second time (I saw for the first time on 23 May 2001). If the viewer has seen the documentary of Leni Riefenstahl "Triumph des Willens" about of the Sixth Nazi Party Congress in 1934 or the megalomaniac dream of Hitler about the fate of Berlin in "Undergångens Arkitektur", he or she will be certainly more impressed with the totally destroyed and chaotic post-war Berlin. "Germania Anno Zero" depicts the lack of hope, starvation and ruins of ordinary people, mostly women, elders, youths and children, doing anything to survive. This pessimist film is a milestone of the Italian Neo-Realism and it is amazing how the German people were able to rebuild their nation (and Berlin) from the ashes. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Alemanha, Ano Zero" ("Germany, Year Zero")

---

---

Page 1 of 3:

[1] [2] [3]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Ratings	Awards
External reviews	Plot keywords	Detalles principales
Your user comments	Your vote history