Rossellini's War Trilogy: Paisan and Germany, Year Zero

The international success of Rome: Open City (1945) prompted Roberto Rossellini to revisit wartime Europe. The result is his "War Trilogy," rounded out by Paisan (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948). These remarkable films improve on the flawed initial installment, showing Axis Europe's reaction to defeat and ambivalence towards their "liberation."


Paisan (1946)

By the standards of neorealism, Paisan (1946) is a full-blown epic. This episodic drama explores the end of World War II, highlighting tensions between Italian civilians and their American and British liberators.

Six vignettes depict the Allied liberation of Italy. Several American GIs liberate a town in Sicily, with Joe (Robert Van Loon) befriending peasant girl Carmela (Carmela Sazio). An African-American MP (Dots Johnson) strikes up an unlikely friendship with a Naples street urchin (Alfonsino Pasca). American Fred (Gar Moore) shacks up with Roman widow Francesca (Maria Mischi) who waits for his return. British nurse Harriet (Harriet Medin) searches for her partisan-lover amidst a British mopping-up of Florence. Three American chaplains take refuge in a monastery, whose Brothers take umbrage when they learn two are Lutheran and Jewish, respectively. Finally, two OSS agents join Italian partisans in a campaign against German troops in Northern Italy.

Paisan loosely recalls A Canterbury Tale but without that film's cheerfulness. Unlike Powell & Pressburger's mythic England, Italy is a bitter, defeated enemy. Mussolini's loyalists and German soldiers conduct scorched-earth resistance, with brutal reprisals against partisans. Antifascist guerrillas achieve little without Allied help. Rossellini contrasts a downbeat ending with the Allied victory; Italy's a loser regardless, the war leaving structural ruin, social divisons and a dangerous power vacuum at the Cold War's onset.

Paisan evokes many tones but its overriding theme is culture clash. The Italians fear Americans as sex-crazed loafers and mock the Brits as ineffectual; the Americans seem bemused by European culture. Attempts to communicate lead to tragedy or misunderstanding. Joe and Carmela's meeting ends abruptly, the girl taking the blame. Fred learns Italian to communicate with Francesca only to dump her. Catholic Chaplain Martin (William Tubbs) preaches religious tolerance to the monks, only pissing them off. Only in combat do the erstwhile enemies work together.

Despite a shoestring budget Rossellini provides lots of location shooting, throwing in two large-scale action scenes. His mostly-amateur cast acquits themselves well; the affecting Carmela Sazio was supposedly an illiterate peasant. Stylistically it's a touchstone for Italian cinema: De Sica's Bicycle Thieves owes much to Rossellini's mixture of charm and pathos, while the Florence episode's graphic street fighting prefigures Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. An absorbing wartime mosaic, Paisan stands as a remarkable achievement.

Germany, Year Zero (1948) 

Paisan's ambivalence gives way to despair in Germany Year Zero (1948). This unremittingly grim tale of postwar desolation shows Hitler's Thousand Year Reich reduced to a Darwinist playground of crime and poverty.

12 year old Edmund (Edmund Moeschke) lives miserably in post-war Berlin. His brother Karl-Heinz (Franz-Otto Kruger), an ex-soldier, refuses to register with occupying powers; sister Eva (Ingetraud Hinze) struggles to find work; their father (Franz-Otto Krüger) suffers from malnutrition. Edmund tries to work honestly but falls into street crime, joining his old teacher Herr Henning (Erich Gühne) to sell black market goods. Edmund takes Henning's survival of the fittest mantra literally, committing a crime that pushes him further into despair.

Possibly the most extreme in the neo-realist cycle, Germany Year Zero uses an entirely unprofessional cast. Berlin remains unreconstructed, divided by the Allied powers and its neighborhoods littered with rubble. Germans toil in menial jobs, cram into crowded tenements, steal coal in broad daylight and generally suffer.  One early scene has squabbling Berliners butchering a horse in the street. Here Allied troops are only snap-happy tourists, unable (or unwilling) to alleviate German suffering. 

Rossellini shows the struggle of "New Germany" to escape Nazism's shadow. Edmund's siblings earn our respect: Eva refuses to prostitute herself and Karl-Heinz eventually does the right thing. But the young protagonist learns all the wrong lessons after being turned away from real work. Henning's mentoring of Edmund mixes Nietzschean harangues with more disturbing attention. Two teenaged criminals swindle Edmund, pocketing his money in exchange for sex and potatoes. He's a warped Oliver Twist, too young to understand his actions but too embittered to be optimistic. Edmund's gone long before committing his stupid, senseless crime.

Some critics fault Zero for forfeiting sympathetic characters in favor of anti-Fascist posturing. True, Rossellini provides more overt messages than previous films: one crude but effective scene plays Adolf Hitler's voice over the bombed-out Chancellery, implying karmic retribution for Nazi imperialism. But even without a strong emotional hook, Germany Year Zero's bleak authenticity seers the memory. Its climactic tragedy will haunt you long after the film ends.

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Groggy hopes to provide more cheerful postings in the immediate future - perhaps drawing from real life as much as films. Stay tuned for future updates.