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Essential Art: Forbidden Games

Georges Poujouly (Actor), Brigitte Fossey (Actor), René Clément (Director, Writer) Rated:
Unrated
Format: DVD
4.7 out of 5 stars 44 customer reviews
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Special Features

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Product Details

  • Actors: Georges Poujouly, Brigitte Fossey, Amédée, Laurence Badie, Madeleine Barbulée
  • Directors: René Clément
  • Writers: René Clément, François Boyer, Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
  • Producers: Robert Dorfmann
  • Format: Black & White, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
  • Language: French
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Rated:
    Unrated
    Not Rated
  • Studio: Criterion
  • DVD Release Date: June 16, 2009
  • Run Time: 86 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B001WLMON2
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #127,375 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

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  • Learn more about "Essential Art: Forbidden Games" on IMDb

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA masterpiece with a misleading title
By Dennis Littrell HALL OF FAMEVINE VOICE on September 6, 2002
Format: VHS Tape
In French the title of this movie is perhaps appropriate, but in English it is misleading. What is "forbidden" about the games that the children play has nothing to do with sex (the usual designation of "forbidden" in English). Instead what 11-year-old Michel Dolle (Georges Poujouly) and 5-year-old Paulette (Brigitte Fossey) do that is forbidden is they steal crosses, from the cemetery, from the top of a horse-drawn hearse--Michel even attempts to steal the rector's crucifix. They do this as a way of coping with death. The crosses are for dead animals, her dog, some chicks, a worm, etc. that they have buried in a little plot under the mill near a stream.

But this is not a horror show or anything like it. Instead, René Clément's celebrated tale of childhood love is actually a strongly religious anti-war movie of incredible delicacy, laced with humor and poignancy.

It begins with an air attack on a stream of people (presumably Parisians running from Paris) along a country road trying to escape the encroachment of the Nazi army. Little Paulette is in a car with her parents and her little dog, Jock. They are gunned down by a German fighter plane. Paulette's parents and the dog are killed. Paulette is left alone carrying the dead dog in her arms. Eventually she wanders onto a farm where she is met by Michel who takes an instant liking to her and becomes her protector and her friend. His is a peasant family of farmers who really don't need another mouth to feed, but they take her in. She is so clean, they exclaim and she smells so good. She is from Paris. She has just undergone the most horrible terror, the death of her parents and her dog, and now she must somehow come to grips with that loss.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsCriterion Collection DVD...at last.
By Cesar on December 28, 2005
Format: DVD
Forbidden Games deals with the reaction of a couple of children -Paullette, who losses both her parents as the consequence of an air attack, and Michel, the youngest of a peasant family in which Paullete finds refuge- in the context of the horrors of war, in this case, the second world war, in 1940.

The movie (unlike others dealing with children and war, like "Germany, Year Zero") does not portray a miserable and deadly environment. Certainly, war is sensed all the time, and the danger of falling bombs is ever present. However, the movie is set in the seemingly peaceful countryside, not among ruins and combats. That doesn't diminish the tragic context of the movie at all. Because we have witnessed what Paullette has gone through. And although Michel doesn't seem to have had any kind of traumatic loss, he's old enough to know what's going on, and what Paullette is suffering. Maybe, this explains the way Michel wants to please Paullette, in her way to direct her pain. Their game of stealing crosses to complete a "big" animal cemetery could be seen as a morbid and macabre play by chlidren spoiled by the war, transformed into monsters. However, we never question the innocence that remains in the main characters as children that they are: what's macabre is not what they do, it's the war that they are witnessing. They just channel the influence of war and its implicit dead without malice.

Whether this topic is analized as the simplicity of an ill influenced child's play, or through any psychological or mental connotations or meanings that could be applied, Forbidden Games is still, even today, a very original piece of cinema, that would hardly reach the same meaning if it's filmed today, without the context and recent history that influenced it back in 1952.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsHow Does a Child Interpret Profound Loss of a Parent
By Gerard D. Launay on May 31, 2009
Format: DVD
Given the task of rating the 25 best movies of all time, I would include Rene Clements "Forbidden Games" along with "The Seventh Seal" and 'La Strada". I was knocked off my feet by the movie.

1940 France...the Parisians are fleeing the Nazi bombardment and the parents of a sensitive girl are both killed by the Nazi planes. Her dog is another victim. Wandering aimlessly, she is befriended by a country family and particularly by a slightly older boy who forges a "love" if not a real attachment to this little girl.

To give meaning to her loss, to mourn, to comfort her dead pet, to avoid confronting the enormity of the events, the girl buries her dog and then buries other animals next to the the dead animal...stealing bits and pieces of gravestones or crosses from a cemetery. Her accomplice is the young farm boy. Eventually, they are discovered and separated.

What are the "Forbidden Games". Of course, stealing from other graves is a forbidden game...but the war and intolerance and narrow mindedness of the adults is the "other forbidden game" After all the second "game" created the first.

Yes, this is an anti-war film...but it is far more than that. It's a piercing psychological examination of the effect of war and parental loss on a young child. I thought the film was exceptional in every way - the acting, the molding of music to events, the photography, the truth of the picture. It is the equal of Hitchcock, the equal of Kurosawa, the equal of Kubrick's best pictures. No film addict - particularly someone who values foreign films - can complete his or her collection without this masterpiece of cinema.

Brigitte Fossey - the young girl - gives one of the best child performances in film, as does the older boy, George Poujuly.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsAn unforgettable movie.

I heard about Forbidden games movie since I was a child from my parents. They always told me that it was a very good and touching movie for the way the story was developed. Read more

Published 14 months ago by Alicia de las Pozas
1.0 out of 5 starsIF YOU LOVE ANIMALS --- THIS IS GOING TO BE VERY DISTURBING TO YOU TO...

Sorry. I would give this movie a zero after watching what they did to that poor little dog. I had to turn it off. Read more

Published 19 months ago by Lucy B
5.0 out of 5 stars... story of two children deserved its Academy Award for best foreign...

Touching story of two children deserved its Academy Award for best foreign language film.

Published 22 months ago by ronald
5.0 out of 5 starsMUST SEE!!

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES EVER, SAD YET FUNNY,THE ACTING IS JUST THE BEST EVER THE CHILDREN IN THIS MOVIE ARE AMAZING LITTLE ACTOR'S, IF YOU DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE YOU WILL MISS... Read more

Published on April 13, 2014 by weezercool
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent

Eerie story of 2 children during the second world war. Simple yet human reactions children express in times of confusion.
.

Published on November 27, 2013 by Jocelyne Lachance
5.0 out of 5 starsA sweet friendship and dignity in death

This French film was the winner of the 1952 Academy Awards, and back then, it's easy to see how a tender subject during wartime can win the hearts of Academy Awards. Read more

Published on July 12, 2013 by Broncos Fan
4.0 out of 5 starsCLASSIC EDITION FOR A CLASSIC FILM.

CRITERION MADE A CLASSIC EDITION FOR THIS EXCELLENT ANTI-WAR THEME MASTERPIECE, AND AS A DVD, IT DID PERFECTLY WELL----WITH A BUNCH OF EXCLUSIVE DOCUMENTARIES AS SPECIAL FEATURES,... Read more

Published on July 2, 2013 by HAN XIAO
5.0 out of 5 starsChildren in World War II

Children's imagination and ways of playing during a period of war. The sensitivity, creativity and feelings the films transmits. Very interesting.

Published on May 21, 2013 by E T LAMMING
4.0 out of 5 starsGreat!

The only thing I dislike is that there's no spanish subtitles, but overall the packaging and the movie itself was really good.

Published on December 25, 2012 by Erness
5.0 out of 5 starsOne of the best films I've seen in this genre

Forbidden Games - Masterful film on innocence in the face of harsh adult realities. Heartbreaking and memorable, this is a film I had to own and share.

Published on December 20, 2012 by Michael Chojnicki

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