Forbidden Games

Forbidden Games is a 1952 French war drama film directed by René Clément and based on François Boyer's novel Les 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. Plot 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. When his father doesn't keep his promise, Michel destroys the crosses by throwing them into the stream. Paulette ends up going to a Red Cross camp, but at the end of the film is seen running away into a crowd of people in the camp, crying for Michel and then for her mother. Cast Georges Poujouly as Michel Dollé Brigitte Fossey as Paulette Amédée as Francis Gouard Laurence Badie as Berthe Dollé Suzanne Courtal as Madame Dollé Lucien Hubert as Dollé Jacques Marin as Georges Dollé Pierre Merovée as Raymond Dollé Louis Saintève as the Priest