Review of Forbidden games (2015) by Edwin A — 04 Apr 2009

Movies revolving around children can be the most sinister of all. There is something about the idyllic innocence that we just assume to be inherent to childhood. As we get older, we're jaded and the cracking of our worlds are more acceptable. When childhoods are shattered, it just seems so much more unbearable.

Rene Clement's Forbidden Games, widely unappreciated and controversial upon release (as with so many great films), stands today as one of the best examples of children in wartime. A young girl, Paulette, loses her parents at the film's opening in a German air raid. Her dog is also killed. She carries the dead dog with her. When she's picked up by another couple, the man tells her the dog is dead and throws it in the river. She follows the dog down stream to get him back. She follows a horse and cart without a driver until she comes across a boy, Michel. His brother has just been kicked by the horse. He takes her home with him after she says her parents are dead. At first his father says no, but reminded that perhaps the neighbors - with whom they have a long standing rivalry over essentially nothing other than being neighbors - may take her, he changes his mind.

During their time together, spurned on by the burial of her dead dog, they begin collecting dead animals and crosses. She's afraid her dog will be lonely. They collect animals - sometimes killing them - to make a cemetery in an old mill. Clement mixes humor and tenderness in a way that masks the sinisterness of their task. Michel becomes obsessed with collecting crosses for Paulette's appeasement. He begins making them, but then stealing them - from church, the cemetery. After his brother dies from the wounds suffered from the horse kick, he steals the crosses off his hearse, then even the cross from his grave. This leads to a humorous confrontation between their family and the neighbors - who they simply assume are the culprits.

The priest has already caught Michel trying to steal a crucifix from the church, and upon seeing the altercation, breaks it up and informs them about Michel's actions.

Michel must return the crosses or Paulette will be given over to the orphanage. This leads to the film's heartbreaking finale.

Forbidden games masks its darkness throughout with hope. It's subtle enough to creep up on you, through our own expectations for how a conventional story would play out. For instance, Clement teases us, for example with the possibility of a resolution between the feuding families when their daughter and son begin a relationship. He makes the film go from optimism to pessimism in a heartbeat. Some have accused Clement of manipulation and exploitation for the situations he put his actors in and the story he tells with them, but what really would have been exploitative would have been to sentimentalize the story. There was a separate ending and opening that Clement shot that made the story more optimistic. It's unknown if this ending was ever shown theatrically, but it was fully edited and prepped for the film. I'm sure for studios and publcists this ending was more in suit for their liking. Nevertheless Clement kept in the more pessimistic ending. Rarely has a film ended with such a heavy punch to the guts. It's almost too much, and I can see how it would have upset. But it is exactly that unsentimentality which makes the film so great.

Bergman once said that to get a good performance from a child, you just don't direct them. Clement directed his children through other means - for example, he told Brigette Fossey that she wouldn't get the bike she was promised to get her to cry. Whatever his methods, he got brilliant performances out of two very young children. Fossey of course went on to become a famous actress.

Children in film mesmerize me. It's such a touchy subject to place children in scenes of turmoil, but the rewards are often the most satisfying (or crushing) - as long as the lines of exploitation for the sake of exploitation is not crossed.

While this film is ultimately unsentimental, it's nevertheless an intriguing exploration of the endurance of youth, and of death. The children in Forbidden Games are too young to fully understand the magnitude of death. Their game is a testament to their inability to comprehend the destruction around them. It is fascinating that as the older and more jaded we become that we are able to accept hardships, yet are less able to actually deal with our pain, but as children, due to our ignorance, we simply accept and endure. Forbidden Games is one of the most affecting depictions of how the actions of adults can shatter our innocence.