My title comment sums up what one is left with after viewing FORBIDDEN GAMES. No more, no less. A sad commentary, of course, on war and what it does to people--or as is the case here--to children.
BRIGITTE FOSSEY and GEORGES POUJOULY give two of the least self-conscious children's performances I've ever seen, their faces in close-up resembling all the innocence and guilt of childhood in a world where grown-ups go about their business without imparting any knowledge or real communication with children.
Their morbid fascination with games involving putting crosses on the graves of dead animals is what their whole existence has come to in war-torn France of 1940. Most of the story takes place on a peasant farmhouse swarming with flies and decay as life and death situations come to the forefront of the plot.
At a time when the neo-realism of certain filmmakers was very much "the thing" among the movie-going public of the '40s and '50s, it's easy to see why FORBIDDEN GAMES won a Best Foreign Picture Oscar.
But it really deals with the sad situation children were in during the war, no more, no less, without making any profound statements or giving us more to ponder than what happens within the confines of a very slim story.
All of the peasant characters (some rather eccentric) are well played and the children are magnificent. But on the whole, it's a rather downbeat treatment of a depressing theme and the kind of film you really have to be in the mood for.
The abrupt and very downbeat ending is not very satisfying.
BRIGITTE FOSSEY and GEORGES POUJOULY give two of the least self-conscious children's performances I've ever seen, their faces in close-up resembling all the innocence and guilt of childhood in a world where grown-ups go about their business without imparting any knowledge or real communication with children.
Their morbid fascination with games involving putting crosses on the graves of dead animals is what their whole existence has come to in war-torn France of 1940. Most of the story takes place on a peasant farmhouse swarming with flies and decay as life and death situations come to the forefront of the plot.
At a time when the neo-realism of certain filmmakers was very much "the thing" among the movie-going public of the '40s and '50s, it's easy to see why FORBIDDEN GAMES won a Best Foreign Picture Oscar.
But it really deals with the sad situation children were in during the war, no more, no less, without making any profound statements or giving us more to ponder than what happens within the confines of a very slim story.
All of the peasant characters (some rather eccentric) are well played and the children are magnificent. But on the whole, it's a rather downbeat treatment of a depressing theme and the kind of film you really have to be in the mood for.
The abrupt and very downbeat ending is not very satisfying.