Germany Year Zero: What's bleak and German, yet directed by an Italian?

I've seen two Rossellini films now and the beginning of one. If all I've seen is any indication, he wasn't the happiest of men. Sure, he survived World War II and "The War Trilogy" (Which this film is part of) concerns itself with, well, WWII, but gads is "Germany Year Zero" despairing. Were talking real journey into the heart of despair stuff here.

Set immediately after World War II, in the skeletal remains of Berlin. The film follows thirteen year-old Edmund Kohler and the travails he goes through in order to merely scrape by with his family. Forced to room up with an incredibly callous and snobby family, the Kohler's are one and all caught up in their own woes. The father is dying and spends day in and day out lamenting the fact, complaining that he's a burden but practically leaping at any chance he gets to continue lying about. Edmund's brother Karl-Heinz is an ex-soldier who's yet to register with whatever board handled rations back then (Out of fear that his military past will get him locked up) and spends his time lounging around, looking harried. Eva, Edmund's sister, spends her nights out partying with G.I.'s, searching for any way she can to pass the time.
Thus, Edmund is left trying to hold this entire family aloft with his skinny boy-arms. A breaking of sorts seems inevitable with this set-up.

Germania's progeny.

This movie is like a sodding eulogy. It is so wracked with despair, it's hard to know where to even begin when it comes to illustrating how despairing it truly is. Early on there's a scene where Edmund passes by a crowd of people encircling a dead horse/cow/animal-thing. These people are so hungry they're actually fighting over the carrion and trying to cut hunks of it's flesh off. I mean, this is truly a decimated country were seeing.
The film looks phantasmal, as though someone dreamed of the fully realized potential of humanity caving in upon itself and splayed the dream across film. You get a sense that the German people haven't learned a thing from what happened to them, some even lament the fact that they can't use their electric driers or that there's no soap, while outside skeletal children are scampering about. There's an utter disconnect concerning what's truly happened and pride and various prejudices still run rampant. The children who stay full run about the streets whoring themselves out or swindling people out of whatever they can get, while not a single person is willing to offer a helping hand to those truly in need.

Feel good movie of 1948!

Of course, this effect, this ruthless darkness is achieved in part due Berlin's state at the time. The city is as important a character as Edmund himself is. It's one thing to see photographs, it's a whole other thing to see it live. Though a Neorealist film, "GYZ" has some downright expressionistic shots in it, owing in part to the feeling of death permeating the setting and the spare light in some night-time scenes. Even the day time scenes feel utterly grey.

The city, Edmund's family and the characters he interacts with seem representative of how Rossellini  viewed post-war Germany. Broken, perverse, and haunted by the phantom of a great evil only just vanquished from the Earth. Over the course of the tale, these things chip away at Edmund and mold him into something, a vision of Germany's future, and past. It feels as though he's the spirit of the nation, idealistic and fair-haired, looking for acceptance and love and yet finding himself forced to crawl deeper and deeper into the filth in order to glean it forth. The result is a drowning of sorts that results in despair all around.

A truthful interpretation of humanity in a low state? I think so.