Forbidden Games

Cited in many critics' polls as one of the greatest films of all time, René Clément's 1952 French classic Forbidden Games remains a timeless evocation of childhood innocence corrupted by war. Although not an immediate hit upon its initial release in 1952, the film's reputation grew after it received the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival, and won an Academy Award later that year. Featuring two of the finest child performances ever captured on film, the story begins in rural France in 1940 when the parents of a little girl named Paulette (played by five-year-old Brigitte Fossey) are killed in a strafing run by German Luftwaffe fighter planes while the family is attempting to flee from occupied Paris. Clutching her dead puppy like a rag-doll, the young orphan Paulette is taken in by a peasant family and befriended by 11-year-old Michel (Georges Poujouly). The children's "forbidden games"—collecting dead animals for their own private cemetery, and stealing crosses from churches and graveyards to mark their makeshift burials—remain baffling to adults, but serve as a way for the children to cope with the horrors of war, and is handled with such delicate tenderness that it's almost heartbreaking in its emotional authenticity. This Criterion presentation features a newly-restored high-definition digital transfer, as well as bonus features such as archival interviews with director Clément and Fossey, a 2001 interview with the adult Fossey taped for French television, and the long-unseen alternate opening and closing sequences of the film, which attempted to distance the children (and the audience) from wartime trauma by "bookending" the story with more peaceful, idyllic shots of the children in a safe, fable-like setting. Wisely, Clément never included these scenes, which would have compromised the film's powerful antiwar message. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (J. Shannon)