Forbidden Games

June 1940, France. The roads are full of civilians fleeing German aircraft. Five-year-old Paulette loses her parents and her dog in a strafing. Carrying the dead dog in her arms, she is taken in by a peasant family. There she befriends a boy called Michel and the two invent a game: burying dead animals and putting crosses on their graves. To get crosses, they go to the cemetery. The subject is not war but children trying to understand death. Paulette learns by imitating something nobody has explained to her, while the adults are meanwhile brawling with their neighbours over a cross. The film's harshest criticism is there, not in the game. The form is plain: countryside, mud, a barn. The music is a single guitar, and the piece played by Narciso Yepes became known worldwide independently of the film. René Clément directs. Brigitte Fossey played the part at five. It won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1952 and received an honorary Oscar for foreign language film in America the following year; the competitive category did not yet exist. Georges Poujouly plays Michel. Who it is for: viewers who like war seen through children's eyes and classical French cinema. Who it is not for: anyone avoiding emotional weight; the closing scene is counted among the most devastating in cinema.