Germany, Year Zero (1948) is a Robert Rossellini episodic tragic Italian neo-realist Trümmerfilm in German, French and Italian, and could and shall be qualified as a film noir, not in the least for the fact that Trümmerfilm are in every capacity actual or virtual noir, by virtue of their subject fields, which comprise the tragedies of the mid to late 1940s with comment on the Second World War and its effects.
Third of what is trailed as a trilogy of stories of World War 2 Germany, Year Zero is Rossellini’s Meditation on Post-War Devastation and Neorealist Experimentation and is as a necessary counterpart to 1940s film makers attempts to present the unreal in as realistic a tone as possible, making the timing of the neo-realist movement excruciating in its combinations of tone.