Popular reviews

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  Review by Carlos Valladares

  There's a shot in this film that I can't get out of my mind. It's when the little German boy hops onto a crowded midday trolley. Even after the boy has gone out-of-shot aboard the train, instead of cutting to the next scene, the camera lingers for an inordinate amount of time, allowing us to glean the faces of each commuter passing the camera by with stoic solitude. They look hot, sweaty, cramped, annoyed, wistful, blank. Then, the camera slightly pans right to view the empty street as people walk by the ruins of their former office-buildings, apartments, marketplaces. All destroyed by the war. Yet they keep marching on. Not out of some optimism, but out of blind necessity. They don't know what else to do. This, I imagine, is the essence of Rosellini's Neorealist Trilogy. What rawness in just ten fleeting seconds.

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  Review by Barmilliv ★★★★½ 2

  Filmes sobre a Segunda Guerra Mundial existem aos montes, e a maioria deles mostra acontecimentos do período da guerra, quase sempre com foco em Adolf Hitler. Também há muitos filmes sobre o que aconteceu depois do conflito, mas, nesse caso, quase todos vêm de um país em especial: a Itália. Foi lá que surgiu o movimento neorrealista, que revelou para o mundo a situação difícil do povo italiano depois da guerra. Esse movimento também abordou a realidade de outros países afetados, como a Alemanha, um dos grandes protagonistas da Segunda Guerra. Um dos principais nomes do neorrealismo italiano, Roberto Rossellini, voltou seus olhos para a Alemanha arrasada e usou os mesmos elementos típicos dos filmes italianos da época. O resultado…

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 4

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★ 13

  There’s really no way to prepare yourself for the levels of bleakness reached by Rossellini’s “Germany, Year Zero.”

  Think basement-level bleak... and then the basement is bombed out. That’s where this movie lives.  

  Here’s a mindset to get into before viewing: Rossellini cast the non-actor child lead of “Germany, Year Zero” specifically to resemble his own recently deceased 11-year-old son. This is a character who undergoes some of the most emotionally devastating events experienced by any film protagonist ever — let alone an actual child. 

  Rossellini filmed  “Germany, Year Zero”  amidst the shambles of Berlin following the allied liberation. The runtime of the movie passes without seeing a single structure untouched by bombing. 

  Wrecked too are the souls of the…

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  Review by cassandra ★★★★★ 8

  Imagine my mood after finishing this trilogy and immediately logging onto Twitter to see this country's clown president retaliating North Korea's nuclear threats with saying "they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen." Not feeling too hot right now. Also, this is my 1000th film. Yay?

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★★ 3

  Bresson would direct the exact equivalent of Rossellini's last neorealist war installment two decades later, but with a rural setting and a female lead, and it would be called Mouchette (1967). Powerful in its message, devastating in its implications, breathtaking in its hidden, underlying layers of controversial subject matter and undeniable poetry. Germany is in its year zero: a year of perdition, reconstruction and desperation. Rossellini, the master of immediate post-war neorealism.

  99/100

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  Review by Jerry ★★★ 4

  Bleak does not even begin to describe this film. Germany Year Zero is Rossellini’s litmus test for empathy; an examination of post-war Germany and how its citizens dealt with the effects of a crumbled fascist regime. The film traces the life of a 12-year-old boy named Edmund following the conclusion of WWII and subsequent fall of The Third Reich. Edmund is caught between two ideological worlds: the Nazism of his ex-soldier brother and former teacher, and the anti-fascist Resistance of his father. Rossellini portrays the former (un)reformed Nazis as the cowards and deviants they are, never begging sympathy for them. Rather, we are asked to empathize with the young boy, and the other women and children trying to survive amidst the…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 3

  The sleeve for this was written such that I got the impression it was set during the war, rather than just after. That kinda threw me off, but it's of little importance.

  What struck me as most disturbing is the straightforward way Herr Henning was portrayed as a child molester. The film never comments on it--it never quite follows through with anything--but he is obviously touching the child seductively, longingly. It was horrifying, and so was everything that came after it. Honestly, this whole film left me feeling a bit sick to my stomach. I immediately followed it with another film that did much the same, and after that, I gave up and picked a third film that I figured…

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  Review by Bruno Andrade ★★★★★

  Então veio o cinema e fez explodir esse universo carcerário com a dinamite dos seus décimos de segundo, permitindo-nos empreender viagens aventurosas entre as ruínas arremessadas à distância. - Walter Benjamin, A Obra de Arte na Era de Sua Reprodutibilidade Técnica

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★

  Taking place in Allied-occupied Germany, Rossellini's final entry into his war trilogy feels almost like the most tragic out of the entire director's movie. I couldn't stop thinking about "The White Ribbon," though the director chooses to go for something less cynical and rather more something close to "pitty."

  The deeply psychological touch along with the nuance that comes with the classic Neorrealistic warmth makes up for a fascinating look into war. Ending on a tragic note that will strike down everyone who watches.

  All in all, certainly a most watch for anyone who wants something compelling and thought-provoking.

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  Review by Redfern ★★★★½

  What makes this film a work of realism? We should not try to locate the reason in the mannerisms of the actors, nor the style with which it has been shot and directed, but rather with the mode of representation that brings to light, or expresses, the affections that determine "attitudes, or types of behaviour" in an environment. When Bazin spoke of neorealism as the comportment of Rossellini's direction, then, how we must understand this is as an aesthetic and philosophic approach to the discovery of truth in art, one that knows reality to exist in the interstices between every modification and affection of people and things that make up our quotidian lives. This is why every true work of…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★½ 2

  Roberto Rossellini’s Germany, Year Zero manages to deliver a combination of neorealism with wide-eyed psychology to produce a bold film that offers a profoundly pessimistic understanding of Germany shortly after WWII. It's the final part in the filmmaker's unofficial war trilogy, coming after Rome, Open City and Paisà, as well as being the shortest and quite possibly also the best. 

  It calls attention to the notion that all Germans have been scarred by the consequences of Nazism, either directly or indirectly or by participation or ignorance, with the understandable case being that human suffering as a result of war goes beyond nationalities and ideologies. The cinematography by Robert Juillard includes some fascinating perspectives of the mostly rubble city of post-war Berlin and the widespread impact of the movie is compelling rather than saddening, and that stands as an indication of Rossellini’s skill as a filmmaker.