Forbidden Games · reception & legacy

How Forbidden Games has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Snubbed by Cannes' selection committee in 1952, it promptly won the Golden Lion at Venice and an honorary Oscar — then got caught in the crossfire when the New Wave critics went after its screenwriters, Aurenche and Bost, as the embodiment of stuffy 'tradition of quality' cinema. Today the Cahiers polemics are a footnote and it sits comfortably among the great films about children and war.

What's debated

The perennial cinephile question: is it one of the most genuinely devastating films ever made about childhood, or expertly engineered tear-jerking — the New Wave's old sneer at Clément still flickers in that debate.

Its footprint

Its guitar theme, played by Narciso Yepes, made an anonymous 19th-century romance so famous that the piece itself is now universally known as 'Jeux interdits' — it's practically the first thing every beginner classical guitarist learns.

Where it stands

A fixture of 'saddest films of all time' lists and a Criterion-approved classic, it's the French film people dare each other to watch without crying.