Forbidden Games, is a 1952 French war drama film directed by
René Clément and based on François Boyer's novel Jeux Interdits.
While not initially successful in France, the film was a hit
elsewhere. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, a Special Award
as Best Foreign Language Film in the United States, and a Best Film from any
Source at the British Academy Film Awards.
It is June 1940, during the Battle of France. After
five-year-old Paulette's parents and pet dog die in a German air attack on a
column of refugees fleeing Paris, the traumatized child meets 10-year-old
Michel Dollé whose peasant family takes her in. She quickly becomes attached to
Michel.
The two attempt to cope with the death and destruction that surrounds
them by secretly building a small cemetery among the ruins of an abandoned
watermill, where they bury her dog and start to bury other animals, marking
their graves with crosses stolen from a local graveyard, including one
belonging to Michel's brother. Michel's father first suspects that Michel's
brother's cross was stolen from the graveyard by his neighbour. Eventually, the
father finds out that Michel has stolen the cross.
Meanwhile, the French gendarmes come to the Dollé household
in order to take Paulette. Michel cannot bear the thought of her leaving and
tells his father that he would tell him where the stolen crosses are, but in
return he should not give Paulette to the gendarmes. His father doesn't keep
his promise: Michel destroys the crosses and Paulette ends up going to a Red
Cross camp.
At the end of the movie she is seen running away into a crowd of
people in the Red Cross camp, crying for Michel and then for her mother.
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