This film describes the social circumstances of Berlin after WW II, in particular, the ruined and desperate life of normal Germans at that time. It was regarded as the emblem of neo-realist film in Italy. It has been seen that in many of his neorealist films, Rossellini tended to utilize local non-professional actors with the purpose of restituting the objectivity and preciseness inherent in the very reality. At the beginning of this film, a boy called Edmund, the film's central character, appeared in the graveyard and dug the grave for only 50 pound man-made butter. He had to work to support his brother, Karl-Heinz, who was afraid of being recognized and punished by the new government for he has been a part of Nazi standing force that fought against the Allies till the end.What made things worse was his father was bedridden with seriously disability, dying of malnutrition. As the director said, “Don't seek traces of our civilization in this film. They've disappeared. The people chose to live in tragedy as though it were their natural element” In the film, the father said sadly that: “The cost-push inflation took my wealth away and the Hitler did the same thing to my son.” Everything becomes out of control and nobody can tell the difference between the moral and the evil. For instance, after Edmund met his former teacher, Mr. Henning , a homosexual, his fate was totally changed. His teacher convinced him that his father was deemed to die for he was weak. In order to save food, he poisoned his father and then committed suicide-jumping out of the window from the building where he lived. The hollow,war torn city was a hell where the youth had old faces and had to hold the burdens allocated by the society. They would never know who abandoned them though the adults may be confused on this question as well. Nothing could be enough to pull them back from the recipe of doom.
Edmund did a rather excellent job before the lens. He reminded me of a Yamahata girl whom survived after the atomic bomb. In that picture, she smiled an unearthly smile and shocked me with the sight of ordinary life. In my opinion, the director proposed to show his responsibility to the public while his personal limitation made it a movie lacking of the sense of reality. Actually, Rossellini wasn't being objective in this movie. A case in point of this was the lecture given by Hitler, which was an obvious shortcoming of this movie.
Anyway, honestly speaking, it's a tremendous movie.
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