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The uncompromisingly dark and emotionally devastating conclusion to Rossellini's World War II trilogy adopts a German perspective. Following on from the Italian-set Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisà (1946), the film was shot on the battered streets, and inside the crumbling buildings, of post-war Berlin.
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Images of death and destruction proliferate throughout this nihilistic tale of crime and punishment. The film's ominous prologue takes place at a crowded cemetery, where a group of desperate workers dig graves to earn a pittance. Rossellini focuses in particular on one young Aryan worker, Edmund. The scene then gives way to a shot of a dead horse, apparently knocked down on the street by a tram. Passers-by stop to carve chunks of flesh from the beast to take home to their starving families.
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Rossellini's stark and gruelling feature is a striking document of the endless struggles of post-war life
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We follow Edmund as he searches for employment to help keep his own poverty-stricken family afloat. He is first conned into selling Nazi paraphernalia by a paedophilic Fagin-style character, then falls in with a band of undesirable thieves. Finally, when these exertions bring little reward, he resorts to poisoning his afflicted, bed-ridden father in a misguided attempt to save the other family members.
Set to a piercing score, Rossellini's stark and gruelling feature is a striking document of the endless struggles of post-war life, from child labour and the reality of the black market to the prevalent worries of prostitution and poverty. Earlier chapters in the director's war trilogy had treated identical themes, yet the tone was always alleviated by occasional strokes of comedy. Here, there is only room for grim irony. (Instead of cutting costs, the death of Edmund's father means the family must pay for a coffin.)
There is a tragic inevitability to the young protagonist's fate in Germany, Year Zero. The brevity of the piece and its lean, economical execution serve only to increase the impending sense of doom, sending Edmund swiftly - helplessly - to his tragic end. The film is dedicated to Rossellini's own son, who died shortly beforehand.
Chris Wiegand
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