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Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini) 1947
“This movie, shot in Berlin in the summer of 1947, aims
only to be an objective and true portrait of this large, almost totally
destroyed city where 3.5 million people live a terrible desperate life, almost
without realizing it. They live as if tragedy were natural, not because of
strength or faith, but because they are tired. This is not an accusation or even
a defense of the German people. It is an objective assessment.” It’s not an entirely convincing argument for the film to make, since there’s a fair amount of dramatic artifice on display here, and it doesn’t really do good job of preparing the audience for what’s to come. Certainly, Rossellini isn’t being objective in this movie. There’s an obvious, albeit humanist, agenda at work in telling this story of a twelve year old German boy who does what he can to ease his family’s suffering in Germany’s postwar devastation. For example, the director includes a strong Christian moral that’s present mostly so audiences can despair when it becomes apparent that because of the boy’s harsh way of life, a wisp of faith is not enough to pull him back from the precipice of doom. He also has no problem using his style to pass judgment on most of his characters. Whatever he might write in the film’s opening passages, Rossellini is surely aware that using an overhead shot or a close-up in his movie has a certain inherent judgmental purpose, and he doesn’t restrain his style from including such cinematic language. Nothing demands that a film be even-handed, so this one’s insistence on its own objectivity is odd.
* * * * Jeremy Heilman 11-22-02 |