Postwar Mourning and Melancholy: Germany Year of Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour

1 Introduction

In the study of postwar mourning and melancholy, the two films Germany Year of Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour are excellent cases for close comparison and analysis. First of all, both films attempt to depict the mental state of people in the postwar period by remapping two typical postwar cities: Berlin and Hiroshima. Second, both films depict the two cities as ruins, making the postwar cities part of “natural history.” Third, both films connect the exterior and the interior, and people’s personal and collective memories. Fourth, both films represent the postwar cities by tracing how heroes, heroines and other characters wander in the traumatic urban space. Drawing on theories of Walter Benjamin, Julia Kristiva, Michel de Certeau, Susan Sontag and other related works on cinema and urban studies, this paper will focus on several key topics related to questions of modernity, mourning and melancholy: First, the impacts of modern war, as a kind of tumor of modernities, on cities, as spatial representations of modernities. Second, how mourning and melancholy, also as symptoms of modernities, are rooted in the mind of people in the modern era. Third, how cinema, a modern media of visual representation, represents external urban spaces and internal psychological spaces of people.

2 Ruins and City as “Natural History”

The film Germany Year Zero opens with a sweeping shot of the postwar ruins in Berlin, where nothing but remnants and the misery of its inhabitants remain. Here, the decimated urban landscape becomes more than a mere metaphor for social decay; it also serves as an allegorical representation of people’s inner worlds.

A significant symbol of war trauma is the grave, which is prominently featured at the film’s beginning as people dig graves. As a sign of death, the grave introduces Edmund, the young protagonist, to the narrative. After leaving the gravesite, Edmund embarks on a wandering through the streets. There is a typical moment when he gazes at the streets, ruins piling up behind him as a sad backdrop. In this context, the ruins are not mere background elements but rather the focal point of the entire cinematic narrative. The city in ruins is the real object of the film, capturing the devastating impact of war and serving as a powerful visual representation of the story being told.

Certainly, in Germany Year Zero, the ruins are seen through the perspective of Edmund. He gazes upon the devastated city, witnessing the remnants of destruction firsthand. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, the cinematic representation of the ruins is intertwined with the French woman’s narration of her own love story. She wanders through the streets, observing this traumatized city. It is through her gaze, captured by the camera, that we witness gray, desolate streets, dreamy streetlights at night, and deeper darkness lurking beyond the lights. Her gaze upon the somber city evokes her own traumatic memory of the past. If in Germany Year Zero, the city itself is the scar of the war, then in Hiroshima Mon Amour, it is the city that merges past and present, personal experience and collective memory. Thus, the accumulation of ruins within the physical urban space provides a gateway into the psychological world of its inhabitants. Meanwhile, the ruins themselves serve as an externalization of internal trauma. More importantly, through the medium of cinematic representation, these two films reach the pinnacle of “natural history” (Naturgeschichte).

Drawing inspiration from Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno, when referring to the city as “natural history,” I am suggesting that the city, born out of modern civilization, is thrust back into its prehistoric state – a “fallen nature” – by the destructive force of war, which acts like cancer on civilization. As Sandro Bernardi comments on Germany Year Zero: “ ‘[L]andscape’ seems paradoxically the most apt term here: the war and the catastrophe of ideologies have brought the world back to its starting point and have plunged the space that was once a city back into the state of nature.”^[1] In general, the metropolis represents a quintessential element of modernity within the narrative of modern society. However, war disrupts this linear progression, plunging the city into an inverted realm. The city is shut down. Time stands still, and simultaneously, time begins anew. This is encapsulated in the concept of “Year Zero” and the notion of the city’s “state of nature” as a starting point.

For Sandro Bernardi, the starting point means a world of death. Bernardi says, “Germany Year Zero constitutes a journey into the world of death and of ruins.”^[2] In fact, in both Germany Year Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour, the landscape of ruins corresponds to a world permeated by death. This world of death resonates with Benjamin’s concept of “universal death,” where not only people but also things are under the spell of mortality. As Benjamin laments, “[t]hings, not just people, come under the thrall of universal death....”^[3]

As one deems these films as mourning dramas, the objects of mourning extend beyond the individuals who suffered from the war. They not only behold the cities themselves, but also mourn for the collapse of Western history and civilization. In this context, the melancholy objects acquire their own subjectivity. In Germany Year Zero, Edmund’s gaze unconsciously collects numerous fragments of the destroyed city: corners, streets, and attics. Similarly, at the beginning of Hiroshima Mon Amour and in other scenes occasionally, the film presents a scan of the miserable city, capturing an anonymous and faceless world of ruins. Through the visual medium, these films can be understood as a form of “Trauerspiel” or the play of mourning, as described by Walter Benjamin. This play of mourning bears witness to the “collective death” of an anonymous world, reflecting the themes of melancholy and the dialectical nature of loss, as analyzed by Max Pensky in Melancholy Dialectics:

Benjamin introduces the concept of melancholia as an expression of the dialectical mediation of subject and object, a process in which both “objective” elements of a concrete world and dimensions of innermost subjectivity fuse and intertwine, illuminating in the process the theological grounds upon which the text, and indeed the very concepts of subjectivity and objectivity, “originate.”^[4]

It is at the level of “natural history” that subjectivity and its relationship with nature can be recognized better. On the one hand, the interiority of subjectivity lends a mental form to nature, imbuing it with a certain form of consciousness. On the other hand, nature itself serves as the structural framework within which subjectivity is shaped and developed. By portraying postwar cities as ruins as part of a sort of fallen nature, the films also explore the aesthetics of “natural history” through the medium of cinema. And it is the very nature of the medium – which comprises the language, the framing, and the grammar of film – that combines the “objective Trauer” (objective mourning) of postwar cities as a “fallen nature” with the “intense brooding subjectivity of the melancholy mind.”^[5] Moreover, at the level of “natural history,” the boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity, as well as interiority and exteriority, become blurred.

These concepts intertwine and merge, forging a complex phenomenology that encompasses the history of the world and underscores the deeply dialectical nature of historical experiences. Thus, comprehending the interiority of subjectivity requires viewing it as moments within a multifaceted phenomenology of nature and the sacred. As Max Pensky indicates:

“Deeper” natures, which life fills with a “deep horror” at its own simple negation, recoil from the vision of an empty world. But this very recoil, Benjamin claims, constitutes not just a withdrawal from the world and a concomitant intensification of subjective interiority, but also leads to an entwined, intensified earthly gaze, seeking an odd consolation in the contemplation of the most creaturely, mortal, and decayed fragments of the world of things.^[6]

In both Germany Year Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour, the depiction of ruins serves a dual purpose: they are not merely realistic representations of physical destruction but also carry symbolic significance. The language of film plays a crucial role in bridging the realm of the real and the realm of the symbolic simultaneously. As Sandro Bernardi observes, “the ruins we see are not only of Berlin but allude to that immense ruin which is, for Rossellini, the Western world […].”^[7] In light of the introductory comments, it becomes evident that Rossellini aims to initiate a moral restoration through his film. While it is true that “[a]mong the ruins, grass grows,”^[8] Rossellini still holds hope that amidst the devastation, people can find a new way out of the ruins and a new path forward. For Rossellini, death represents not just an end but also the potential for new beginnings and rebirth. In the face of destruction, he envisions the possibility of a renewed life emerging from the ruins. By combining realistic portrayals of ruins with symbolic implications and through the language of film, Germany Year Zero carries a hidden message of resilience and the potential for transformative change.

According to Walter Benjamin, “falling back into the domain of nature” also means “falling back into the domain of history.”^[9] In Germany Year Zero, the natural-historical mapping of the city ultimately leads to a representation of the social totality, where the collective experience takes precedence. On the other hand, the narrative in Hiroshima Mon Amour emphasizes the power of personal memory, suggesting that personal experiences can hold greater weight than official history. This raises the question of whether personal experience/memory distorts or offers a distinct access to history.

According to Marguerite Duras, it is natural that “always their personal history, brief as it might be, will prevail over Hiroshima.”^[10] In her perspective, personal experiences and emotions take precedence over historical accounts. However, even though Hiroshima Mon Amour appears to prioritize personal love over history, it still maintains a significant presence of historical context. In other words, while personal experiences may dominate the narrative, the film does not dismiss the weight of history. Instead, it intertwines personal and collective memories, creating a narrative that acknowledges both individual experiences and the broader historical backdrop. Hiroshima Mon Amour illustrates that personal stories and emotions can serve as a lens through which history is understood and felt. The film recognizes the complexity and intricate interplay between personal and collective memory, suggesting that they coexist and influence one another, and inviting contemplation on how individual experiences shape and intersect with the broader historical context. As Julia Kristeva remarks, “everything is there — suffering, death, love, and their explosive mixture within a woman’s mad melancholia […]”^[11] “Duras’ melancholia is also like an explosion in history. Private suffering absorbs political horror into the subject’s psychic microcosm.”^[12]

3 Exterior and Interior, and Personal and Collective Memory

In Hiroshima Mon Amour, the language of film plays a crucial role in establishing a connection between the internal psychic microcosm and the external physical world. Through the language of the film, the psychic microcosm (or the inner world of emotions and memories) finds its counterpart in the external world: it is the physical microcosm of the city (Hiroshima) that serves as the project of this psychic microcosm. In this way, the film becomes a project that intertwines the psychic and physical realms, creating a profound interplay between the inner and outer worlds. In other words, it is through the language of film that “death and pain” as well as politics and history spread within “the spider’s web of the text […].”^[13] These elements spread through the intricate web of the film’s narrative and imagery, captivating and affecting viewers. The film’s language becomes a powerful tool that carries the weight of these themes and evokes an emotional response from the audience.

Through this filmic language, the inherent mourning of history and self is visually and emotionally depicted. The topological touching of cities, manifested through the mapping of the destroyed urban landscapes, mirrors the mapping of the traumatic inner world of postwar individuals. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, the physical scar of the city becomes a pathway that leads, through the heroine’s wanderings, to an exploration of the inner “malady of grief.”^[14] As the heroine wanders the streets of Hiroshima, the destroyed city reminds her of the pain of the past. The film transcends the boundaries between the external and internal, intertwining personal and collective experiences within the context of the devastated city. It visually and emotionally represents the connection between the physical and psychological landscapes, allowing the audience to engage with the profound themes and experiences depicted in the film.

In this context, the film frame serves as a powerful tool in creating a space of reduplication, as well as the folding of folding, as described by Gilles Deleuze. In Germany Year Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour, the physical space of cities and the psychological space of individuals are not only juxtaposed but also mirrored within the film’s frame. The film becomes an architectural structure that encapsulates memory, passion, and dreams. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, the city of Hiroshima leads the heroine to recall her past days with her lover; in Germany Year Zero, the destroyed exteriors and shabby interiors reflect people’s spiritual state of disorder.

When we consider film as an architecture of memory, it becomes apparent that physical traumas inflicted upon the outer world are represented spatially within the film. The destruction and the scars of war are visually portrayed, creating a tangible sense of the external traumas experienced by the characters and the cities. At the same time, the film captures the psychological traumas of the inner world, which unfolds in the dimension of time. The inner emotional and psychological landscapes of the characters are rippled out through the film’s temporal progression, allowing for a profound exploration of their experiences and memories.

The film frame becomes a space where the physical and psychological dimensions intertwine, offering a multi-dimensional representation of trauma and its impact. It enables the audience to engage with the film’s architecture of memory, passion, and dream, and invites them to contemplate the complex interplay between the outer and inner worlds. Within the film frame, presence and absence coexist, forming two interconnected aspects of the same entity. Alain Resnais, director of Hiroshima Mon Amour, refers to his original concept for the film as “parallel montage.” This technique is employed to create parallelisms and juxtapositions between different elements in the narrative. For instance, at the beginning of Hiroshima Mon Amour, the bodies of the two lovers “are paralleled by a later reference to iron being ‘made as vulnerable as flesh’ by the atomic explosion.”^[15] This parallelism serves to highlight the interconnectedness of human bodies and the destructive force of war, blurring the boundaries between physical and metaphorical realms.

In Hiroshima Mon Amour, not only do Hiroshima (where the heroine has a brief love affair with a Japanese man) and Nevers (where the heroine had a love affair with her boyfriend, a German soldier) mirror each other, but the Japanese and the German characters are also doubles (or counterparts). Through the acts of walking and narration by the French woman whose brief love affair with this Japanese man evokes her memory of past love experience with the German soldier, both memory and history converge, leading to a world of plurals. The use of parallel montage and the interplay between mirrors and doubles in the film narrative contribute to the exploration of the complex relationship between memory, history, and identity. By intertwining different elements and perspectives, Hiroshima Mon Amour challenges singular narratives and embraces the diversity and plurality of human existence and experience.

In this sense, the filmic text of Hiroshima Mon Amour provides a space of reverberation. As Julia Kristeva argues, “such a reverberation of her objects of love shatters the heroine’s identity: she belongs to no time period but to the space of the contamination of entities where her own being wavers, dejected and delighted.”^[16] It highlights the profound impact of personal experiences and emotional connections on individual identity. The heroine’s attachment to objects and entities reverberates within her, blurring the boundaries of time and space. It disrupts the conventional understanding of identity and opens a space where her own being is intimately intertwined with the contamination of these objects.

Moreover, melancholy extends beyond the individual mind. Just as the mind has its own spatio-temporal correspondence, cities themselves possess mental forms, memories, and melancholic symptoms. The cities depicted in these films become more than mere physical spaces, encapsulating collective memories and emotions of their inhabitants. They carry a psychological weight, evoking a sense of melancholy and nostalgia that reverberates within the urban landscape.

Within the space of reverberation, exterior and interior are not only connected but also overlap. In this context, the term “interior” holds two significant meanings: the interior of the city itself and the interiority of the characters. The interior of the city encompasses not only the physical spaces, such as the interiors of private houses, but also extends to a psychological level. This psychological interior of the city encompasses elements such as dreams, the unconscious, and the inverted experiences of the urban environment. By mapping cities in ruins, both Germany Year Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour delve into the deeper layers of a city’s collective psyche, exploring the hidden and subconscious aspects that shape its identity.

Simultaneously, the notion of interiority extends to the characters within the films. The cinematic representations of the two films also delve into their inner worlds, their thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The interiority of the characters intertwines with the interiority of the city, creating a complex interplay between the external and internal realms. The characters become intertwined with the psychological landscape of the city, reflecting and being constantly shaped by the urban environment in which they reside.

In Germany Year of Zero, the character Edmund serves as a medium for exploring different interiors within the film. Through his perspective, we are introduced to various living spaces, each offering a glimpse into the realities of postwar life. One notable example is the cramped living space that Edmund’s family shares with four other families. This setting reflects the dire conditions and overcrowding that many faced in the aftermath of the war. The physical interior of this shared space becomes a manifestation of the external challenges and hardships experienced by the characters.

Furthermore, Edmund’s encounters with other people and households provide additional insights into different interior spaces. When his former teacher takes him to another family’s house, it is depicted as both filled with old furniture and surprisingly empty. This juxtaposition suggests a sense of desolation and loss within the interior space, mirroring the overall atmosphere of the postwar city.

As Edmund wanders through the physical space of the city, he serves as a conduit between the exterior cityscape and the interiors he encounters. His gaze allows us to delve deeper into the decaying and rotten interior of the city, revealing the extent of destruction and despair. Both the exterior and the interior spaces are marked by ruins, symbolizing the devastating impact of the war on the physical and psychological landscapes.

For Germany Year Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour, each film presents its own unique form of interior. In Germany Year Zero, the main interior is Edmund’s home, which becomes a reflection of the harsh realities of postwar life. The cramped living conditions, such as Edmund’s sister sharing a room with another woman and Edmund’s dying father lying in bed, emphasize the lack of privacy and the absence of a nurturing everyday life. Private space is invaded, and the constant surveillance by others adds to the sense of confinement and vulnerability. It highlights the homelessness and the emptiness of the interiority experienced by the characters during this time.

Ironically, the hospital emerges as a contrasting interior space in Germany Year Zero. It is depicted as a place that is comparatively better than the home environment. This ironic portrayal exposes the dire circumstances of the characters’ lives and their desperate search for solace and care. The hospital serves as a stark reminder of the fragmented and broken nature of the postwar world, where traditional notions of home and sanctuary are disrupted.

Similarly, in Hiroshima Mon Amour, the cellar serves as a symbolic interior space. It becomes both a physical prison for the French woman and a psychological space where she is encouraged to confront and chew on her feelings of love. The cellar represents a hidden, subterranean realm that delves into the depths of emotions and memories.

Through these symbolic interior spaces – the confined and dark room, the hospital, and the cellar, both Germany Year Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour allegorically depict an inverted world, which reflects the disarray and turmoil of the postwar period and people’s struggles to reconcile personal desires and experiences in such a context. The two films provide a visual representation of the rotten interiority through the shattered exteriority.

What is closely pertinent to these symbolic interior places is the theme of illness. In a way, it is illness that illuminates the decay of the everyday world. In German Year Zero, the impending death of Edmund’s father reflects the state of deterioration within the postwar society. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, the French woman suffers a deep psychological trauma. As the opposite of normal life, illness leaves people in a psychological wasteland. Thus, “illness” in these two texts, as a metaphor and symptom of the empty interiority of the city, in turn, shows how the whole world is destroyed.

4 Walking on the Edge of Nothingness

It is the act of walking that unites the city, the ruins, and the melancholy gazes. Both Germany Year of Zero and Hiroshima Mon Amour use the act of walking to map the urban landscape and the psychological landscape of the people who have suffered the war. In Hiroshima Mon Amour, it is the French woman, the wandering subject, who combines the shadow of the exterior reality on the mind and the subjectivism of the city as the exterior world. Thus, to walk on the streets of the city is also to walk on the edge of her own abysses. She wades through the rushing currents of objects, but also through the whirlpool of the self.

In Melancholy Dialectics, Max Pensky describes Benjamin’s thought as part of the “melancholy way of seeing. Between melancholy subject and melancholy objects, this way of seeing subsists in the dialectical interval between these two constituted moments.”^[17] In Hiroshima Mon Amour, it is the act of walking that connects the melancholy subject (the woman) and melancholy objects (streets, ruins, and the city itself). And the medium between walking and mourning, between seeing and speaking, is also “cinematic representation.” In other words, as a language of architecture — an architecture of memory, passion, and time — the film Hiroshima Mon Amour not only maps the physical space of the city, but also penetrates the inner depths of subjectivity.

Arguably, to walk on the edge of ruins is to walk on the edge of nothingness. The longer the boy in Germany Year Zero and the woman in Hiroshima Mon Amour walk, the weightier the silent power of trauma becomes. The more they look at the city, the more they see the nothingness of the city, and the brighter the nothingness becomes. In fact, at the beginning of Hiroshima Mon Amour, the Japanese man keeps reminding the French woman: “You saw nothing in Hiroshima, nothing.”^[18]

To walk on the edge of ruins is also to walk on the edge of language. From the beginning of Hiroshima Mon Amour, the city expresses itself through narrations. While narration always goes hand in hand with walking, the subject also becomes a kind of “floating word” with a contemplative gaze. Thus, through the medium of film, the domain of architecture and the domain of language are combined. Through the act of walking, the “floating words” also find their signatures on the skin of the city.

In the meantime, the realm of language leads to the realm of the unconscious. When Alain Resnais, the director of Hiroshima Mon Amour, speaks of the dialogue between the French woman and the Japanese man at the very moment when the camera scans the miserable scenes of postwar Japan, he describes the dialogue as “a sort of dream, a voice coming from the unconscious [...].”^[19] In this sense, the city transcends its physical boundaries and takes on a metaphysical existence. Assuming that a city also possesses its own mental form and cognitive essence, we can perceive in Hiroshima Mon Amour how it delves into its subconscious and its reverie. Initially, the director embarks on the mission of creating a documentary about the atomic bombing, only to confront the impossibility of such a task. Put differently, the director’s inability to portray history directly opens the door to the realm of the unconscious: a domain intertwined with love and mortality, remembrance and oblivion, and the ethereal realm of dreams.

Within this realm of dreams, a profound conflict emerges, encompassing the perpetual battle between the present and the past, as well as the struggle between silence and speech. This internal strife finds its expression in the realm of language, as aptly stated by Julia Kristeva: “How can one speak the truth of pain, if not by holding in check the rhetorical celebration, warping it, making it grate, strain, and limp?”^[20] However, both the narration and the stream of consciousness in this film vividly reveal the weakness and inherent limitations of language, the insurmountable challenges of verbal expression, and the impossibility of speaking – speaking of the past, speaking of the trauma. As Marguerite Duras poignantly articulates: “All one can do is speak of the impossibility of speaking of Hiroshima. The knowledge of Hiroshima is something that must be set down, a priori, as being an exemplary delusion of the mind.”^[21]

Hence, the most viable course of action appears to be a retreat into silence, a reverting back to the primordial state of nature. This notion aligns with the concept of the city as “natural history.” As discussed earlier, the representations of the city of postwar Hiroshima are accomplished by narrations. As the unbroken narration unfolds, progressively revealing the futility of language, the presence of Hiroshima as a city gives rise to an intangible void – a sphere of absence, while the parallel city, Nevers, is concealed within the depths of the unconscious.

Towards the conclusion of Hiroshima Mon Amour, as the French woman wanders through the streets, a striking contrast emerges between brightness and blandness. The brightness symbolizes the apparent resurgence of the city — Hiroshima, which represents the present and the future. On a separate front, the blandness alludes to Nevers, a painful reminder of the indelible past and the core identity of a melancholy subject. The interplay between presence (the bodies in Hiroshima) and absence (the bodies in the past) constructs a silent drama that invites the audience to tune in to the weeping of the shattered subjects resonating with the realm of silence. Simultaneously, both the luminosity and the void serve to underscore the hollowness of the traumatized city. Once again, through the cinematic medium, the decaying core of love and the fragility of narration find their perfect corresponding reflection: the void that pervades the city of Hiroshima. In turn, this desolate emptiness of Hiroshima surrenders itself to another languid realm of dreams – a realm woven with love and death. The city remains silent and ineffable, just as the human psyche does. Consequently, with the limitations of language, the urban landscape and the inner landscapes of individuals are compelled to retreat into the realm of nature.