1952 Winner, Forbidden Games

Forbidden Games

Director:        René Clément

Distributed by:  Times Films Corporation

Released:  December 1952 (in USA)

Country:  France

William Tecumseh Sherman, Union General in the American Civil War, is credited with the succinct but meaningful bon mot, “War is Hell.”  Perhaps less famous but only slightly less concise is the cryptic title of a song by the chanteuse Pat Benatar:  “Hell is For Children.”  Using the capability to construct a syllogism, as taught to me during my eight years of Jesuit education, I thus deduce the following:  War is for Children. 

Okay, that doesn’t really a lot of sense, but Forbidden Games, 1953’s Best Foreign Film, is a movie that shows that while the grown-ups may be the ones shooting and bombing each other, the kids certainly get mixed up in the unpleasant business that war is.

Paulette with her dead dog

We start with an air attack by the Nazis on the fleeing Parisians during the 1940 Battle of France.  A macabre parade of cars exits the city into unknown country, with desperate and frightened families taking what they can squeeze in, trying to escape the destruction of the France they once knew.  One dad picks a bad time to forget to fill the gas tank, and he, along his wife and young daughter, Paulette, appear to be stuck.  To add to the panic, Paulette’s dog runs away and the five-year-old cute-as-can-be blonde girl rushes after him.  Which of course means papa and mama have to rush after Paulette, which results in everyone but Paulette being casualties of the attack, including the dog.  Paulette is traumatized, seemingly thinking they are all sleeping and cannot be woken.  As the caravan moves on, Paulette is taken on, extremely reluctantly, by another family, only able to carry the dead pooch with her.  The mother on the car thinks that's one dead dog too many in their car and heaves him out into the fields.  Paulette jumps off the car to retrieve her pet and then makes her way on her own into the country.

Planning the pet cemetery

She soon happens upon a ten-year-old boy named Michel.  Michel lives on a farm along with his family, and though she is a bit on the young-side for him, they instantly bond, almost romantically.  Michel looks out for her and his family takes her in.  Becoming aware of the pet she is still toting around, Michel tells Paulette her pretty little pet has to be buried.  Paulette is upset—won’t he be all alone?  Good point, Michel responds.  The next step will be to find other dead animals to keep him company, and if they can’t find them dead, they can make them dead.

If all this sounds a bit comical, it isn’t really.  Paulette is clearly expressing her confused grief for her parents in her caring for the dog.  In essence, death is treated so casually by everyone, it is quite unsettling.  This is the product of war.  Paulette and Michel will bond over their shared experience of death, becoming more and more reliant on each other.  Their pet cemetery won’t be looked at with any fondness by Michel’s family or by the authorities, but to them, it is what has bound them together.

Paulette has Michel wrapped around her finger

Forbidden Games is really a touching film, sweet and sad with just a little bit of humor.  Paulette, played by Brigitte Fossey (who would appear as a character in the extended version of 1990’s Best Foreign Film Cinema Paradiso), is about a cute a kid as you are going to find, and it’s easy to see why Michel becomes so attached to her so quickly.  As disconcerting as it is to see how war affects the way the lower-class French folks see death, there is something beautiful in the innocence of the children as they have the hell of war thrust upon them.

The Title:  Jeux interdits.  An oddly titled film, if you ask me.  I believe it refers to the children’s attempt to understand and deal with death by creating their pet cemetery.  The adults don’t see the way they go about things as appropriate, but it is their innocence that is being stripped away by the adults who supposedly know better.

The culture:  The Battle of France, which resulted in the Nazi victory over and occupation of their

Brigitte Fossey in Cinema Paradiso, still crying

neighboring country, is one that hasn’t been the subject of much in film, at least in American cinema.  It must have been unimaginably horrific for the average peasantry in France, having lived through the hell of World War I only a quarter of a century earlier.  The opening scene of the families fleeing their home city to escape the Germans is very moving.

Agenda danger:  This isn’t quite the anti-war movie you might expect.  But certainly, the film’s main theme is how a culture of death caused by war can lead to the end of the innocence for the young folks just starting their lives.

Best Picture that year:  The Greatest Show on Earth.   Some consider this film to be the worst film to ever win Best Picture.

Rating:  A very moving story, fueled by great performances by the kids.  It’s a war film that shows the horrors of war without the blood and guts of it.  The horror is less in the tragedy of death during war than it is in the matter-of-fact acceptance of death necessitated by the culture that war brings.  

Note:  There was no Best Foreign Film awarded in 1953.