75 years of the Germany Year Zero
On July 10, 1948, at the international film festival in Locarno, Switzerland, the premiere of Roberto Rossellini's film "Germania anno zero (Germany, Year Zero)" took place. This film completed the so-called "military trilogy" by Roberto Rossellini, begun with the film "Roma, cittĂ aperta (Rome, Open City)".
Roberto Rossellini borrowed the title of his film from the title of an essay by the French philosopher Edgar Morin, which was written in 1945-1946. 25-year-old Edgar Morin was then the head of the "propaganda" department of the French military government in Baden-Baden and a member of the Communist Party. Morin was prompted to write this essay by Stalin's statement that "Hitler is leaving, but the German people remain," made against the background of the general hatred of the victorious allies for the German people.
Rossellini dedicated the film to his son Romano, who died in 1946 at the age of 8 after an emergency operation for an inflamed appendix. The choice of actor Edmund Moeschke for the title role in this film was due to the fact that his appearance was very similar to Romano Rossellini.
Filming began in Berlin on August 15, 1947, and was carried out without an approved script. Rossellini instructed the actors, many of whom by then had no film experience, to improvise their dialogue. While filming on the streets of Berlin, Rossellini was struck by the indifference to the crew from people on the streets who were too preoccupied with trying to get food and survive. In mid-September, location shooting in Berlin was completed, and production moved to Rome on 26 September 1947 to shoot indoor scenes.
When the German actors arrived in Rome, they had to wait until November as the film's set had not yet been built. Starving in devastated Germany, the actors pounced on Italian pasta, which they could not afford in their homeland. As a result, everyone gained weight by November, and filming had to be delayed until they were down to their original weight and thus the appearance they had during filming in Berlin. To do this, they were put on a strict diet. After filming was completed in Rome, most of them did not want to return to Berlin, and some simply fled to the Italian countryside.
Even with all the twists and turns described above, the film's final budget was $115,000 (the equivalent of $1.6 million today).
At the Locarno Film Festival, the film won two awards: the Grand Prix for Best Film and prize for the Best Screenplay. The film did not participate in other festivals.
As for the assessments of film critics, they turned out to be very ambiguous. As usual, the most scathing review came in September 1949 from The New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther. In this review, he noted in particular:
"there is a strange emptiness of genuine feeling in this "Germany Year Zero," ...What might be a terribly touching story of the ruin of a 12-year-old boy, surrounded by relatives and associates in a most miserably degraded state, becomes, in the cold accumulation by the camera of sordid details, little more than a literal (and depressing) presentation of an objective case.....It may be that "Germany Year Zero" is a social document beyond reproach. Certainly its pictorial brilliance and its social detail suggest it is. ... But the sum effect of the presentation is a sense of bleak discomfort and despair, unrelieved by any purge of the emotions."
In Germany, the film was shown for the first time only in 1952, and then only at a closed screening at the Munich Film Club. The film became known to the general German public only in 1978, after it was shown on television. Although, Roberto Rossellini's film "Germany, Year Zero" was not shown in Soviet cinemas as well.
Despite the fact that more than 70 years have passed since the release of Roberto Rossellini's film "Germany, Year Zero" on the screens, modern moviegoers rate it rather highly. 65% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10. Given this indicator and the above, the rating of Roberto Rossellini's film "Germany, Year Zero" according to FilmGourmand was 8,242, which allowed it to take 455th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
