The definition of “Italian Neo-Realism” is radically altered by Roberto Rossellini, one of the movement’s leading auteurs, in his cinematic exploration of the post-second world war moral vacuum engulfing the erstwhile Third Reich.
Germany Year Zero (1948) is devoid of Italian flavour, possessing a Teutonic cast, German dialogue, and exterior locations shot entirely among the ruins of Berlin just two years after the demise of the Nazi regime (although the interiors were filmed on studio sets in Rome).
At the same time, the film is unmistakably Rossellini in character. The themes are consistent with his progressive social outlook, and the shooting methods are in keeping with the director’s esteem for spontaneous dialogue and nonprofessional actors.
Although quite different from his Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisan (1946), the third in Rossellini’s so-called wartime trilogy is as antithetical to Hollywood gloss as its predecessors.
The Kohler family’s saga was too raw to have been confronted by a German filmmaker when Rossellini’s cameras took to the streets of the forlorn capital in 1947.
The native population was reaping what the Nazi regime had sowed, and the question of collective guilt versus individual responsibility could only be tackled by an outsider.