Recently Viewed Items
Forbidden Games (Criterion Collection) (Essential Art House)
- Starring: Brigitte Fossey, Georges Poujouly, Amedee
- Director: René Clément
The following promotions apply
Prices, promotions, styles and availability may vary by store and online.
Availability:
In Stock
This item is available online, but is not available in stores.
Items purchased from the Music, Movies + Books category have a standard shipping fee of $2.99 per order. Items in your order purchased from other categories are subject to standard shipping charges.
Details
Description
One of the first films to see the horrors of war through the eyes of children, Forbidden Games was a critical smash, winning prizes from the New York Film Critics, the British Academy, and the Venice Film Festival. Adapted by Francois Boyer, director Rene Clement, and two others from Boyer's novel, the story focuses on Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), a five-year-old refugee from Paris taken in by a peasant family after her parents are killed during a bombardment of a civilian convoy. Michel Dolle (Georges Pujouly), the family's 11-year-old son, becomes her best friend, and they create a cemetery in which Paulette's dog is interred, along with other animals and insects, some of whom the children kill themselves. The Dolle family is too busy feuding with the Gouards, their neighbors, to notice the absence of the children. Eventually, authorities locate Paulette and insist that she be placed in an orphanage for legal adoption. Unsentimental and yet heartbreaking, Forbidden Games demonstrates the strategies of children who witness war to deal with the constant presence of death. It's also a bitter condemnation of the selfishness of adults who could offer their charges more love and protection. Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Features
- Genre: Drama
- Category: Anti-War Film, Childhood Drama, War Drama
- Theme: Innocence Lost, Orphans
- Release Date: June 16, 2009
- Rating: NR (Not Rated)Rating Opens in New Window - Mild Violence
- Studio: Criterion
- Lead Actors: Brigitte Fossey, Georges Poujouly, Amedee, Lucien Hubert, Suzanne Courtal
- Supporting Actors: Louis Sainteve, Pierre Merovee, Denise Peronne, André Wasley, Jacques Marin, Laurence Badie
- Director: René Clément
- Run Time: 1 hr 26 min
- Language: French
- Subtitle Language: English
- Format: DVD
Additional Information
- DPCI: 246-03-6018
- ASIN: B002NC4LZS
- Catalog #: 11561371
- Item can not be gift wrapped.
Shipping & Policies
- You may return this item to any Target store.Opens in New Window
- Shipping & Delivery InformationOpens in New Window
- Estimated Ship Dimensions : 7.51 inches length x 5.32 inches width x 0.56 inches height
- Estimated Ship Weight: 0.21 pound.
Guest Reviews
There are no reviews for this item.
Have any thoughts you'd like to share?
Expert Reviews
It should come as no surprise that filmmaker Rene Clement spent five years in search of financing for this unsparing look at the ravages of war on children. It's not that the violence in the film is so intense; even both of the story's young protagonists, Paulette and Michel Dolle, survive without a scratch. But the portrait Forbidden Games paints of its adult characters is unsparingly disdainful; this is not exactly a tribute to the imperishable spirit of the French people during wartime. Paulette and Michel have their own way of dealing with war, by building a cemetery for animals in an abandoned mill. Michel's parents and older siblings and their neighbors, the Grouards, have their way, too, by sniping at each other and jockeying for position among the community as to who is perceived as the most generous -- or least selfish. The Dolles' decision to take in Paulette is based in part on their fear that if the Grouards do the same, they'll earn another civilian medal. There is more than one set of forbidden games being played here: The secret that Paulette and Michel share runs parallel to an affair between Michel's teenaged sister, Berthe, and the Grouard's son, Francis, a soldier on leave. But even here, the children come off as more noble than their furtively ****** adult counterparts. For a story with the potential to drip with easy sentimentality (generous peasant family takes in adorable war orphan), Forbidden Games offers something more bracing: a clear-eyed view of the innocence of children and the myopia of adults amid the ravages of war. Nothing else in Clement's career matched the achievement of this classic. Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
