Forbidden Games
Cinema Reborn is a unique Australian film festival that screens newly restored prints of classic films. Like a lot of film buffs I’ve been volunteering my services every year, introducing a movie, this time, René Clément’s Forbidden Games. As the festival winds up in Sydney and moves to Melbourne, I’m running that address as this week’s film column.
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Forbidden Games – Jeux Interdits – is a film about childhood, and about death. From its first appearance in 1952, the combination of these themes divided audiences. For its detractors, there was something indecent about a pair of children being so obsessed with death. For its admirers, the movie was a landmark for precisely that reason, exploring territory previously unknown to the cinema.
The film was rejected by the Cannes Film Festival but went on to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and later, an honorary Oscar. It had the makings of an instant classic, but was pushed aside by rise of the Nouvelle Vague, which dominated French cinema from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. The poetic nature of films such as Forbidden Games seemed merely precious when put alongside those edgy, early features of Godard, Chabrol and Truffaut, but today we can see it has outlasted almost anything made by the New Wave directors.
The dramatic opening scenes take place in 1940, during the so-alled Battle of France, when the Germans were advancing swiftly, waging all out war. More than 2 milion people fled Paris, taking whatever they could carry. That mass exodus of civilians crawling along crowded roads, was harrassed and terrorised by the Luftwaffe. It’s one of these attacks that sets this story in motion, as five-year-old Paulette is orphaned and sent wandering in the countryside.