Forbidden Games

Forbidden Games is the 1953 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film, directed by René Clément, one of the leading post-War directors in France. It stars a 6 year old Brigitte Fossey, who would later go on to have a successful career as an actress. This is the story of a little girl who is orphaned in the opening scene of the film as her family, along with hundreds of others, are fleeing Paris and being pursued by Nazi aircraft. During an attack on a bridge, Paulette's family perishes.

Rather than stay with the caravan, she follows the river to retrieve her dog, who has also died in the attack. There, she meets a little boy and he takes her to his family farm where she is temporarily adopted. While the movie deals with the horrors of war, it is not a war film. At its heart, the movie is about the ability of childhood innocence to prevail even in the darkest of times and examines children invent ways to understand them.

The two children live in their own secret world where the rules of conduct that govern the grown-up world don't apply. The world they create in an attempt to understand death creates conflict as it grows continuously at odds with the workings of the small farm community. 

There is no attempt to place morality on the children's world. Instead, the film depicts the ways children inventively deal with adult topics such as love, death, sorrow and joy. It's beautifully shot, wonderfully understated, and ultimately heartbreaking. 

Interestingly, the Criterion Collection includes an alternate beginning and ending, which were fully edited, indicating that these alternates were strongly considered up until the very last moment. The alternate opening and concluding scenes create a frame-tale structure that would've contained the entire movie in a storybook world. This would've lessened the heartbreak and preserved the innocence of the characters, but ultimately would have taken away from the impact of the film, which is probably why they wisely chose to delete them. But I must admit it was nice to see watch them afterward because it gave me some sense of relief for the children.