Film Depictions of Children as Modern Anti-War Crusaders

Abstract

Cries of "never again war" echoed throughout the ravaged cities of Europe in the first years after World War II. At the center of these pleas for peace were children, portrayed in political and cultural discourse as the true victims of adults' war-mongering folly. The postwar peace movements began as soon as the war ended, with films of suffering children, directed by established filmmakers desperate to rescue these young victims from war and its aftermath. Three films in particular caught public and politicians' attention for their portrayal of children wandering throughout ruined cities and barren country sides— Irgendwo in Berlin, followed by Valahol Europaban and finally Roberto Rossellini's Germania Anno Zero. These three postwar filmmakers employed images of a group of children who, abandoned by the society they had once belonged to, became victims of war, turning them into nothing more than an unruly horde marked by events too horrible to contemplate.