This film was the first of a string of flops that never ended for Rossellini, after the international acclaim heaped on his first two neo-realist films, "Open City" and "Paisan". From here he began his well-publicized affair with Ingrid Bergman that finished off his career in florid melodramas like "Europa 51" and "Voyage to Italy".
A darling of "autistic" - er, rather, "auteurist" - film scholars, Rossellini made the odd choice of making a film in Berlin, with a German cast all dubbed into Italian. Watching the film with English subtitles proved to be too distracting, what with three different idioms on the screen at once. Rossellini once again proves he can work well with non-professionals, especially children. But his results remind me of Oscar Wilde's jibe at puppet shows: "What an economy of means! And what an economy of ends!" The music is horribly goading, like you're watching a suspense thriller in which there are neither suspense nor thrills. And rather than tragic, the ending is simply unconvincing - its very suddenness contributes to its pointlessness. Granted, watching more than an hour's worth of Berlin in ruins might make a viewer want to do the same.
A darling of "autistic" - er, rather, "auteurist" - film scholars, Rossellini made the odd choice of making a film in Berlin, with a German cast all dubbed into Italian. Watching the film with English subtitles proved to be too distracting, what with three different idioms on the screen at once. Rossellini once again proves he can work well with non-professionals, especially children. But his results remind me of Oscar Wilde's jibe at puppet shows: "What an economy of means! And what an economy of ends!" The music is horribly goading, like you're watching a suspense thriller in which there are neither suspense nor thrills. And rather than tragic, the ending is simply unconvincing - its very suddenness contributes to its pointlessness. Granted, watching more than an hour's worth of Berlin in ruins might make a viewer want to do the same.