Forbidden Games (1952)

November 14, 2022 6:08 PM

A young French girl orphaned in a Nazi air attack is befriended by the son of a poor farmer, and together they try to come to terms with the realities of death.

100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Available on Amazon, possibly also at your local library. (Criterion released it on DVD and Blu-Ray but doesn't seem to have the streaming rights.)

posted by johnofjack (2 comments total)

So this was my full take.

I really appreciated how the whole thing is really told through the kids' perspective. A fuller description: the orphan girl is taken in, and the son is largely delegated to be her "babysitter". When the girl turns up at their farm, she's carrying the corpse of her recently-killed puppy (the puppy died in the same air raid that killed her parents), and when the boy goes to bury it the girl balks; so the boy then gets the idea, "let's find another dead animal to bury so your puppy has a friend." And thus they start working away at an ad hoc pet cemetery, largely ignored by the adults until....the kids start getting a little carried away. (Note: the kids do NOT become animal killers, save for one scene where one kid kills a cockroach. But even THAT scene has some telling stuff in it.)

And I don't know how the hell the director got that performance out of our lead, who was only five.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:55 AM on November 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've started this film twice, and twice been unable to finish it. Maybe this time.
posted by kandinski at 5:39 PM on November 15, 2022 [1 favorite]