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Forbidden Games

Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games)

1952

René Clément

Georges Poujouly, Brigitte Fossey, Amédée, Laurence Badie ...

7.8

3,904

Drama. War The story focuses on Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), a five-year-old refugee from Paris taken in by a peasant family after her parents are killed during a bombardment of a civilian convoy. Michel Dolle (Georges Pujouly), the family's 11-year-old son, becomes her best friend, and they create a cemetery in which Paulette's dog is interred, along with other animals and insects, some of whom the children kill themselves. The Dolle family is too ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The film is so powerful because it does not compromise on two things: the horror of war and the innocence of childhood (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Philip French The Guardian	"[A] delicate, beautifully paced film (...) The film is both deeply moving and darkly comic, and the performances of Poujouly and the infinitely expressive Fossey (...) are among the finest ever given by children."	POS
United States	Bosley Crowther The New York Times	"A brilliant and devastating drama of the tragic frailties of men, clear and uncorrupted by sentimentality or dogmatism in its candid view of life."	POS
United States	David Ehrlich Time Out	"If war is a fist closing on a raw egg, Clément’s unforced levity (...) allows the film to find a terrible beauty in the yolk that slips through its fingers (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times	"'Forbidden Games' is especially good at creating the complicity between children (...) 'Games' deeply personal look at its two protagonists also prefigured the New Wave that was to come."	POS
United States	Mike D'Angelo AV Club	"It remains an unusually bracing experience, if only for its willingness to deal head-on with material that few care to contemplate."	POS
United Kingdom	Paul Taylor Time Out	"A potentially fascinating patchwork is glossed over with an irritating layer of heartstring humanism, and now looks 'touching' rather than challenging."	NEU
United States	Variety	"Rene Clement’s direction is excellent. Moppets Brigitte Fossey and Georges Poujouly are brilliantly handled and give an air of spontaneity to their roles."	POS
United States	Ed Gonzalez Slant	"[Clément] had an uncanny gift for structural and theoretical contrast (...) It’s difficult to fault a film that scrutinizes the veracity of childhood with such clarity (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United Kingdom	Ben Walsh The Independent	"The two young actors are astonishing in Réne Clément's exquisitely constructed gem from 1952."	POS
United States	Kyle Watson IGN	"A devastating portrait of war (...) Clément's great achievement in the film is creating a seamless chain of events on screen"	POS

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