Yet another truly outstanding French film about childhood and featuring a performance by a child to rival that in Poil de Carrotte. The brilliant script is the work of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, shortly to be savagely pilloried by the inferior Francois Truffaut. Rene Clement's sure hand behind the camera keeps a fine stew - elements of a Hatfield/McCoy peasant feud blend seamlessly with drama, pathos and satire - simmering perfectly in the story of a five year old girl who, whilst fleeing with her parents and hundreds of others from the Paris of 1940 is orphaned dramatically when her parents are strafed as she lies in their arms. The same fate befalls her dog and Clement does not shun from realism as another traveller, noting the dog's condition, brutally snatches it from the child and hurls it unceremoniously into a river. Paulette (Brigitte Fossey) retrieves the dog and eventually takes up with Michele (Georges Poujouley) a couple of years older who in turn takes her to his peasant family amongst whom she stands out like a sore thumb. Together the two children create what can only be describes (long before Stephen King even came on the scene) a pet cemetery in a local mill, beginning with the dog which is supplemented by the odd chicken, worm, etc and for which they steal real crosses inadvertently aggravating a long-standing feud. This is a film that has it all, laughter, tears and everything in between and cannot be praised too highly and will be around long after Truffaut's ouevre has been turned into banjo pics.
Review of Forbidden Games
