Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

thegodfathersaga Child psychology is fascinating in the way it employs fantasy and games to deny hard hitting reality and ultimately spawn happiness out of the blue; It's a futile and inconsequential past time to adults, but it's a reason for being to children. The film gets that, and not in the slightest tries to manipulate the children's vulnerabilities for an easy and fat emotional output - which, i imagine, would seem counter- intuitive to a Hollywood studio - instead, the film is told from the children's perspective, as Twan mentioned; my favorite scenes are those shared between Paulette and Michel, we get to observe their innocence and realness, and the film doesn't shy away from the gullibilities of their understanding of life and death, the music helps in that but never to oversell it.Another part of child psychology i find compelling is the philosophy of "i want it, then it should be mine". I'm still struggling to understand the moral incentives for such acts; children don't feel remorse unless if maybe punishment is in line, and they are certainly convinced that they have better use of whatever they've stolen. maybe they do it out of some burning need to experiment and to explore some feeling of control.Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games) is a powerful film because it is not compromising. The story of Paulette and Michel doesn't end well for them, and the film closes on a sad note, perhaps advancing the notion that life is ultimately defined by loss and hardships, finely accentuated in Michel's eventual disposal of the crosses.

gavin6942 A young French girl (Brigitte Fossey) orphaned in a Nazi air attack is befriended by the son of a poor farmer, and together they try to come to terms with the realities of death.I was a little bit torn on this film by its style, as it seemed to border on comedy, and the budget seemed rather low (though I have no idea where the French film industry was at in 1952). I know it started out as a short, so maybe they had not expected to have a big picture budget... and the comedy aspects might just be my dark sense of humor.The innocence is what sells this film. From the very beginning, when the girl does not seem to comprehend the weight of death, we know she is all too innocent for the world of war. She knows what "dead" is, but does not seem to grasp the permanence of it. She carries her dog far longer than she probably would if she knew he was gone, and she does not understand what it means that her parents are probably in a hole.While the film takes place during the war, it strangely seems to be little concerned with the actual conflicts. Instead, we have the small-scale conflict of neighboring families, and a scandalous love affair... how much this remains in the forefront or background varies.

jeromec-2 This review definitely contains spoilers.I am one of those people whose response to the world is thought. I am often taken to task for that response, and I know it is a terrible weakness much of the time. This film cannot be responded to by thought alone. It would be a travesty. It is a huge temptation on my part to go on about the 14 Stations of the Cross and the 15th one lost on the road (which is sometimes thought of as the Resurrection of Christ). Nothing could be more unimportant. Of all the many films I have seen, this one more than most others, demands that we feel before we think.Forbidden Games was made shortly after the Second World War. It was fresh in the minds of those who lived through it. The inhumanity of war was never very far from the director's mind (Rene Clement, who was also given credit for participating in the writing). France was a major victim, and Clement makes war's horror his 3rd most important character. For those that notice such things, music is the 4th character. It counterbalances the ugliness that is always in the background.The film centres around the response of two children (one in particular -- the young girl -- Paulette -- who was perhaps 5 or 6 at the time) to death. After the shockingly pointless murder of her parents by a plane strafing a column of refugees -- who were doing nothing but evacuating Paris and represented no danger to the incoming conquering Nazis -- Paulette encounters Michel (who is perhaps 9) as he is trying to round up cattle.Paulette is adopted by the Dollé family: Michel is their youngest son. Michel takes on the responsibility of helping her adjust to the almost normal life he lives, but he soon becomes caught up in the horrors that she has experienced, and being the kind soul he is, he wants to help her.They develop a plan to steal crosses to mark the graves of the dead creatures they have found around the farm -- the most important of which was her dog who was hit during the strafing. Stealing crosses is no easy matter. Michel gets himself into all sorts of hot water trying to find enough crosses to mark the graves of 14 creatures buried in the nearby abandoned mill. That provides some of the screenplay's humour, which I did not find amusing, but I saw how others could.Sometimes Michel acted as a 9 year old. He was tempted to kill a cricket to add it to their graveyard. Paulette screamed at him not to. Of the two, she is the one who understands the true nature of death, and she does not want to cause it needlessly, but she is not without flaws. She wants him to steal the priest's cross from the alter which he attempts to do. She is not satisfied with just any cross: she wants the best there is probably for her dog.European films are noted for their characterization and comments on humanity rather than plot the way North Americans understand plot. Plot has come to mean special effects and or action. Forbidden Games does not need artificial action. It needs only the two children whom we care about deeply and the background of war. Plenty is done with just following the children around from their meeting, their developing love for one another, their need to shut out the inhumanity around them, their helplessness in the betrayal of the adults who did not seem to care that she was going to be separated again from a family that cared about her, to the ending. We see Paulette leaving a family that loved her and going to a situation more typical of war -- an overcrowded orphanage for children manned by kind but beyond overworked nuns. Her painful cry for her friend and his angry rejection of traditional symbolic Christianity is what we are left with. What more do we need?

Mort & Spunky the awesome cat It's been a long time since I've so vehemently disagreed with a high average rating.The "plot" has so many holes in it that it becomes laughable. We're really meant to believe that this little girl is more concerned with and terrified by the death of a dog than her parents? This family of half-wits would haven really taken her in? A boy of that age is going to be so enamoured with a girl (?!?) that he's going to adopt her in that manner and be willing to steal for her? What I saw was a mediocre attempt to use children to sell a movie to adults. Clearly, most saw something quite different. The only thing I came away from this film with was, one hopes, a somewhat accurate view of poverty in rural France during and before WWII.Far better, less manipulative yet more moving films involving children are Kolya, Where the Wild Things Are, Son of Rambow, Billy Elliott, Central Station, Little Miss Sunshine, Close to Leo, Ma view en Rose or the Harry Potter series. If this film helped people trying to get over the tragedy and aftermath of WWII, mission accomplished. In the 21st century, to me, it's a second rate competitor with infomercials on late night cable.