Anniversary of the Forbidden Games
On May 9, 1952, René Clement's film "Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games)" premiered in Cannes.
The fate of this film is a real path through thorns to the stars. It all started with the fact that in the late 40s, a recent graduate of the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies (IDHEC) François Boyer wrote the script and offered it to French film studios. They rejected this scenario. Then François wrote a novel based on the script, which was published in 1947 under the title "Les Jeux inconnus (The Secret Game)". In the early 1950s, the producer of the young French film company Silver Films, Robert Dorfman, decided to make a film consisting of three segments, united by the common theme "Children and War". One of the segments was supposed to be based on the novel "The Secret Game". The director René Clément was involved to realize this idea. He, in turn, brought in screenwriters Jean Orench and Pierre Bost, who reverse-engineered Boyer's novel into a screenplay.
By spring of 1951 shooting of this segment have been carried out, but the further work on the conceived film has stopped because of financial difficulties of the company. A year later, a film company management, without having found necessary financing for shootings of other two parts of a film, but also wishing to keep already finished shooting material, has decided to make on its basis a full-length feature film. But children grow quickly. Also change quickly. For example, the featured actress - Brigitte Fossey - who at the moment of shootings was 5 years old, for a year blurts out milk teeth. And the protagonist - Georges Poujouly – has cut his hair for other film. Besides landscapes in which shootings were conducted, have changed for one and a half year. More shortly, René Clément and his team had to use all skill that all these changes remained not noticed by the cinema-goers.
In the spring of 1952, the shooting of the film was completed, and an attempt was made to include it in the program of the Cannes Film Festival, which was supposed to begin on April 23 and the program of which was completely completed. After long and scandalous bickering, it was decided to organize for this film a special, not even non-competitive screening, which took place on the last day of the festival - May 9. As a result of the screening, the film was awarded the so-called "Independent Award", not stipulated by any regulations.
With the screening of the film in Cannes, its distribution in France began. Almost 5 million French moviegoers watched it over the year, 12% of the country's population. But by many French film critics, the film was received with hostility. Some accused the film of an unfair, distorted and even abusive depiction of French peasants.
Others, representatives of clerical structures, accused the film of almost sacrilege. And, regardless of religion. For example, in Turkey, a Muslim country, the film was taken off the screen due to allegations of blasphemy. And I do not remember that this film would be shown in the cinemas of the Soviet Union. Even such an outstanding figure in French cinema as François Truffaut two years later ranked this film among openly anti-clerical. However, Truffaut at that moment was only 22 years old. Highly likely he couldn't understood much yet.
In August 1952, the film was presented at the Venice Film Festival. And again, not without scandal. Initially, the organizers of the film festival refused to include the film in the competition program, on the grounds that he allegedly already participated in the Cannes Film Festival. In the end, justice prevailed, and the film won the Golden Lion.
A year later, in 1953, the film received an honorary Oscar. (From 1948 to 1955, winners of the Best Foreign Language Film category received an honorary or special Oscar.)
In 1954, the British Film Academy awarded René Clément's movie its BAFTA Award for Best Film from Any Source, although William Wyler's "Roman Holiday" and Vincent Minnelli's "The Bad and the Beautiful" were among its competitors. Brigitte Fossey, the leading lady in the film, was personally introduced to Queen Elizabeth II. Also in 1954, the film was awarded the Danish Bodil Prize for Best European Film.
Film critics accepted film Rene Clement's movie "Forbidden Games" with a bang. The New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther called the picture
«a brilliant and devastating drama...uncorrupted by sentimentality or dogmatism in its candid view of life.»
And the guru of American film criticism, Roger Ebert, rated the film with the maximum in his rating system four stars, included it in his list of "Great Movies" and in a review dated December 18, 2005 noted:
"The film is so powerful because it does not compromise on two things: the horror of war and the innocence of childhood."
As for audience ratings, 68% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film an 8 or higher rating. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Rene Clement's film "Forbidden Games" according to FilmGourmand was 10,073, which allowed it to take 42nd Rank in the Golden Thousand. Among the films produced by world cinema in 1952, these are the highest figures. On this basis, Rene Clement's film "Forbidden Games" can be considered the best film of world cinema in 1952.
