Forbidden Games (1952)

Silver Films
Director: René Clément
Starring: Georges Poujouly, Brigitte Fossey

Honors:
Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival
Special Academy Award for Foreign Language Film
BAFTA for Best Film

Using the viewpoint of children to study the human condition this rather simple French film produces for a quiet, deep picture and an example of the rise of post-war motion pictures as an art of heavy expression of thought and the existential crisis in society. A story about the imposing finality of death being pondered by the unassuming minds of children makes for a feature that toes to lines of lighthearted and heavy, being simple yet dark, while it is unassuming and profound. Carried by the impressive performances of two very young actors this film would leave many questioning whether they witnessed something unsophisticated or discover them pondering deeper within themselves on the understanding of life and the world.

 

Forbidden Games is a French drama of two young children coming to terms with the ideas and realities of death. During the onset of World War II, the very young orphaned Paulette (Brigette Fossey) is taken in by a peasant farm family, The Dollés, as she immediately befriends the 10 year-old son Michel (Georges Poujouly). With Paulette unable to fully grasp the idea of the recent German air attack that took the lives of her parents, Michel and Paulette begin a small cemetery for the dead puppy she had been carrying since the bombing that claimed her parents. Michel efforts to impart on Paulette his naïve understanding of religion, including prayer and crosses as they try to fill the crude pet cemetery with other dead creatures as companions to the puppy. In attempt to flesh out the graves, the children steal crosses from the church and its adjoining graveyard for use in their cemetery, embarrassing and angering Michel’s father (Lucien Hubert) when he discovers his son’s actions. Michel agrees to return the stolen items to the church if Paulette is allowed stay with them, but when his angered father breaks his promise Michel runs to destroy the crosses in disgust while Paulette is taken away by displacement officials, left crying out for Michel, the two children struggling to understand.

 

This movie is truly difficult to capture in words as it can come away as morbid by description. A girl loses her parents in a bombing and spends a good amount of time holding a dead puppy. The children build a pet cemetery and seek out other dead animals to fill it. Then they go and steal crosses from a church. It all sounds weird, but actually it is about two young minds that have yet been able to comprehend the heaviness of death, religion, and life. These things take lifetimes for many to wrap their minds around and here it is delivered to two children that try to make sense in a world and time when things very complicated. It is heartbreaking story, yet the two young, unpolished actors carry the picture are remarkable in their performances coaxed by director René Clément. The best manner to digest the heart of the film is to just view it away from any distraction, allowing its slow pace to draw you into its story of loss and the struggle to understand for innocent minds.

 

Based on the French novel of the same name, this feature falls within the New Wave of motion pictures rising in France during the decade. The story allows for the simple rural setting where the peasant family’s home resides, background to an unassuming story of these two children without the complications of cinematic complexity. The film and its story keep things rather light in the shadow of all the ugliness that appears to surround the meek plot.

 

Death is horrible and final as the film opens with Paulette’s parents, a bickering married couple, fall slain to German bombs while Paulette is unaware of how cumbersome she can be as a child in such a setting. The film closes with the heaviness of Michel’s father punishing him by sending poor Paulette away leaving the audiences with a sense of emptiness and heartbreak. However, much of the picture is light as the children go about creating something as morbid as a cemetery as if playing house. The improvised graveyard comes to represents their safe space, the only thing peaceful in their world where death and surrounds them. Innocent abounds in the story as the children mean no harm by stealing crosses while the parents’ intentions in punishing their son is a means to caring and teaching, despite the hurt it causes. Yet in the end they all come to realize that the world is filled with disappointment, death, and the eventual maturation to come.

 

The cast is fleshed out with many fine supporting players making up the Dollés and their neighbors, the Goudards, with whom they share a comical rivalry, even with a small Romeo and Juliet subplot buried within. However, the film comes down to two surprising performances from child actors. The two stars were plucked by Clement when Georges Poujouly was only 11 and little Brigitte Fossey was only five. The first film work for both would go on to be praised wildly over the years as the two completely inexperienced stars benefited from the complete innocence in the roles. Clemet worked to get the performance from Fossey, who was so little and charmingly blameless that anyone in the audience would want to hold and protect her from the cruel world. Poujouly is slightly more polished in his portrayal of the farm family’s youngest son who becomes somewhat an older brother to Paulette, mentoring her with what he thinks he knows of the world. Basic as they both may have been at the time; they deliver moving performances that are praised in film history all these years later.

 

Like many pictures in early French New Wave film, Forbidden Games was not well received initially in its native country. It was not until it reached international markets where it gained its critical success. Its fringe screening near the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1952 drew ire for playing unofficially in the program. Favorable reviews came from critics, but the protests brought the picture negativity, along with the way the film portrayed peasant as simpletons in its story. However, when Forbidden Games screened later that summer at the Venice Film Festival it came away with the top prize, The Golden Lion. Suddenly the feature was an international success. Critics all around would eventually praise the picture, eventually being named the Best Picture by the British Academy while the Academy Awards honored the film with a special award, a precursor to the eventual “Foreign Language Film” category.

 

Today Forbidden Games remains a classic of French cinema and highly praised feature led by two not yet juvenile stars. It makes for a picture that grows in significance after you view it, pondering what it portrays as it digests in the mind. Its simplicity masks its deep profoundness and lives on with those that watch and admire it.