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Ren\u00e9 Cl\u00e9ment\u2019s \u201cForbidden Games\u201d<\/a> (1952) uses a 5-year-old\u2019s wartime ordeal as the basis for a remarkably unsentimental allegory of childhood innocence and adult ignorance. Straightforwardly simple but psychologically complex, the movie is sweet, sardonic, and ultimately shattering.<\/p>\n Widely (if not universally) hailed on its release and periodically rediscovered as the most troubling French film made in the aftermath of World War II, it returns for a week at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration.<\/p>\n Evoking multiple traumas, \u201cForbidden Games\u201d unfolds on the eve of France\u2019s surrender to Germany; the opening sequence depicts the panicky exodus of an estimated two million Parisians in June 1940. Crawling through open countryside, the caravan of cars and wagons is ruthlessly bombed by the Nazis. Paulette (Brigitte Fossey) bolts from the family auto to pursue a pet puppy. Her parents follow, the Germans strafe the road. The adults are killed, but not Paulette. Physically unharmed, she wanders off, cradling her dead dog, into fields as verdant as Eden.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A beautiful, golden-haired child with a clear direct gaze, Paulette is discovered by an 11-year-old farm boy, Michel (Georges Poujouly), and brought home to his rustic family. They have their own issues, benignly ignoring Paulette. Unable to process what has befallen her parents, she focuses on burying her dog in the company of other small creatures found dead. Eager to join her obsessional play, Michel helps create a secret cemetery, stealing crosses to mark the graves.<\/p>\n Denied the possibility of mourning her mother and father, Paulette creates her own ritual. That the child neither recognizes the farm family\u2019s totemic \u201cGood Lord\u201d nor understands the symbolism of the crucifix suggests that she may be Jewish (or had freethinker parents). Be that as it may, her difficulty in comprehending her loss highlights the failure of French Catholic metaphysics. Indeed, Paulette\u2019s na\u00efvet\u00e9 renders the customs she observes all the more strange.<\/p>\n At the same time, another \u201cforbidden game\u201d plays out next door: Michel\u2019s older sister tussles in the hay with the neighbor\u2019s son, a just-returned army deserter. The families already hate each other and in a ridiculous argument over the missing crosses, the respective fathers come to blows over an open grave.<\/p>\n Not immediately embraced, \u201cForbidden Games\u201d was deemed too downbeat for the Cannes Film Festival. Was it that, as suggested by the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther in his appreciative review<\/a>, the French were shown in too harsh a light \u201cconfused by their own pitiably ignorant, hypocritical and inhuman fixed ideas about death?\u201d Or was it because, as Crowther further noted, \u201cone little 5-year-old girl\u201d appeared as \u201cthe towering symbol of the war\u2019s vast devastation?\u201d \u2014 a comment made months after the American publication of Anne Frank\u2019s diary.<\/p>\n As \u201cForbidden Games\u201d filled a need then, so it might now. We live in a world where death rains from the sky and tens of thousands of children are killed or orphaned, as was Paulette. The opening assault reverberates throughout, but \u201cForbidden Games\u201d saves its most heartbreaking moment for Paulette\u2019s climactic \u201crescue.\u201d<\/p>\n Forbidden Games<\/strong><\/p>\n Through May 15 at Film Forum in Manhattan, filmforum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n