Final triumphant scene of father and son in “Somewhere in Berlin”

I have been writing on children’s films specifically for half a decade, and began to include them in my general work more than a decade ago. Yet, the more I write about, research and watch them, the less confident I am in my answer of what a children’s film is. Part of the dilemma is that filmmakers seldom know what their target audience is, evening arguing the point with studios up until the point that a film is premiered (in which case the audience seems to have the say). The third film in the East German film production company DEFA’s repertoire, Irgendwo in Berlin  (Somewhere in Berlin, dir. Gerhard Lamprecht, 1946) has consistently been included in volumes about East German children’s films. The story of a boy struggling to understand his despondent father, returned from World War II, the film might well have spoken to other young children after the war who despaired at ever seeing the “real” return of their fathers – the letters of a young Brigitte Reimann who described her Vati’s disheveled appearance at the train station where the family went to meet him after his release from a Soviet POW camp come to mind. Certainly, Somewhere in Berlin has enough pedagogical messages to instruct young boys (never mind the girls) as to how to push their fathers to re-assume their roles as heads of household and the nation. Still, given the choice between that much reality and the brilliant colors and fantasy of the Soviet folklore film The Stone Flower (dir. Alexandr Ptushko, 1946), released the same year in German cinemas, would children or even their parents willingly have chosen Somewhere? Or does Somewhere merit the category of children’s film more because of its subject matter – the everyday tragedies and victories of young people – than does a film that must make its appropriateness for a children’s audience explicit by framing the movie with an old man who tells the tale of the “stone flower” to a group of excited children?