GERMANY YEAR 90 NINE ZERO, Jean-Luc Godard's hour-long take on the end of the Cold War, is, as one might expect from this legendary French filmmaker, a wry, allusive meditation on world politics and cinema. Taking its title from GERMANY YEAR ZERO, Roberto Rossellini's 1947 neorealist
drama of post-World War II Berlin, Godard's film is less savage than that earlier classic, emerging instead as something of a companion piece to his own 1965 movie ALPHAVILLE, complete with hard-boiled private eye character Lemmy Caution, played as before by Eddie Constantine.
"The past isn't dead, it isn't even passed yet," Godard once observed, and GERMANY YEAR 90 NINE ZERO explores the lingering aftermath of history as reflected in the streets of a reunited Berlin. Lemmy, dubbed "The Last Spy," wanders morosely through a wintry landscape, deserted streets, and East
Berlin's fabled Babelsburg movie lot, searching for the West. "Once I crossed the border, the phantoms came out to meet me," he remarks, echoing an intertitle from F.W. Murnau's NOSFERATU. Arriving in the capitalistic West, amid the glitz of the Kurfurstendamm, Lemmy appears nostalgic for the days
of the divided city and the political contrasts it once symbolized. "Test the West," a cigarette advertisement entreats, but Lemmy, true to his name, looks cautious.
Reportedly, GERMANY YEAR 90 NINE ZERO was made in response to a request by French television for Godard to make a film about solitude. Certainly, an aura of remoteness and isolation suffuses the movie, even if Constantine's gruff but affable presence and Godard's ironic humor lighten the mood
somewhat. Clips from vintage German and Russian films remind us that, as with all of Godard's movies, cinema is also the subject. When ALPHAVILLE was released, critics compared its setting to East Berlin. Now, 30 years later, the comparison has been reversed. leave a comment