Forbidden Games by René Clément (1952)

June 1940. Civilians flee to the south of France before the conquering German army. German planes bombard and strafe the column of refugees, killing the parents of Paulette, a five-year-old Parisian girl. Her little dog, killed along with her, is thrown from a bridge into the river below. After recuperating the dog’s body from the water, Paulette is separated from the column. She walks down a dirt path through the woods, following a horse which has bolted, its broken cart trailing behind.

The horse arrives in a field where the Dollé family is working. When the older son Georges tries to catch the horse, he is injured by a kick to the stomach. His eleven-year-old brother Michel, who has run after a stray cow, comes upon Paulette and takes her home with him. He convinces his father to take her in by threatening to give her to the Gouards, a neighboring family with whom the Dollés have been feuding for years.

Paulette spends the evening with the Dollé family. Georges is seriously hurt and spends a sleepless night. Paulette wakes up screaming, her sleep troubled by nightmares. Michel goes up to the attic to comfort her.

When Paulette goes to find her dog’s body the next morning, she meets the local priest. He teaches her how to pray for her dead parents and tries to get her to make the sign of the cross. With Michel’s help she buries her dog in an abandoned mill, where the two children decide to create an animal cemetery.

That evening Michel’s father becomes angry with him for making too much noise hammering together makeshift crosses for the cemetery. As punishment Michel is deprived of dinner but later is called downstairs to pray for his brother Georges, who is dying. Georges soon dies, his bed surrounded by his helpless family. The next morning while helping his father repair an old horse-drawn hearse, Michel notices several loose crosses on the roof of the wagon.

Mr. Gouard’s son Francis, who has deserted during the chaos of the French army’s retreat, returns home. He and Berthe Dollé are in love and want to marry despite the feuding between the two families. Michel shows Paulette the crosses he has stolen from the hearse.

During the funeral mass Dollé discovers the disappearance of the crosses from the hearse and is convinced that the Gouards are responsible. Later, after confession, Michel attempts to steal the cross from the church altar. The parish priest catches him and punishes him. In the attic that evening Michel and Paulette make small signs for the graves of the dead animals they have collected and decide to steal some real crosses from the cemetery by the church. When they go to the barn to get the wheelbarrow to transport the crosses, they surprise Berthe and Francis in the hay.

On Sunday morning the members of the Dollé family, followed by the Gouards, go to the cemetery. The Dollés discover that their family crosses have been removed. Blaming the Gouards, Dollé begins breaking the crosses on their family graves. This provokes an altercation between the two fathers during which they both fall into a newly dug grave and continue to fight. The priest stops them by fingering Michel, who takes to his heels. That evening the Dollés try to persuade Paulette to tell them where the crosses are hidden, but the girl refuses to talk. She is supported by Michel, who has crept back into the house by way of the attic.

The next morning Gouard catches Michel in the barn and beats him to make him talk. The boy refuses until the police come to get Paulette to have her taken to an orphanage. When Michel’s father seems to agree to keep Paulette, the boy tells him where the crosses are. His father nonetheless allows the police to take the girl away. Furious at his father’s deception, Michel runs to the mill and destroys the cemetery by throwing the crosses into the river.

Paulette has been taken to a Red Cross center where a nun puts a card with her name on it around her neck and asks her not to budge. When she hears someone call “Michel,” she gets up and disappears into the crowd looking for her friend.

*The original version of the film begins with an rather maudlin “prologue” in which a small boy relates a story to a little girl. At the end there is an equally vapid “epilogue” in which the boy finishes telling the story while the little girl weeps. Clément explained that the producer insisted he add these two scenes for commercial reasons.