stolen crosses
by Douglas Messerli
Jean
Aurenche, Pierre Bost, François Boyer and René Clement (screenplay, based on a
novel by François Boyer), René Clement (director) Jeux interdits (Forbidden
Games) / 1952
Clement’s
poignant film begins with horrible images of a mass escape by citizens of Paris
and elsewhere into the French countryside, German planes of World War II
following them and randomly shooting at the streaming hordes on foot, in horse
carts, and cars, the few processions they have been able to gather weighing
them down. Upon one strafing, everyone temporarily abandons their former
positions, falling to the ground to protect themselves. Among them are a
husband and wife with their five-year old daughter, Paulette (Brigitte Fossey)
and her pet dog. When they return to their car, it will not start up, as others
behind them in the seemingly endless line of escapees impatiently honk and
scream for them to move forward. After a few moments, others grab the car,
tossing it into a culvert, the occupants escaping the vehicle just in time.
Forced to carry some of their luggage, they are now among those on foot.
A second horrible attack occurs, this
time Paulette’s beloved pet escaping from her hands, as she rushes forward to
capture it. Terrified of her running among the bullets, the couple chases after
Paulette and, as they finally recapture her and the dog, drop again to the
ground; but this time bullets strike the father, mother, and pet killing them
all. The child touches the face of her mother as if in an attempt to awaken her,
finally standing—her dog still in her arms—in desolate confusion. Another
couple in the long line of pilgrims take her into their cart, demanding,
however, she toss away the dead dog and, when she refuses, remove it from her
arms, throwing into the river below the bridge which they, at that moment, are crossing.
Another attack slows the course again, while Paulette takes advantage to run
off in chase of her dog as his corpse flows downstream.

It may
be one of the most truly horrifying of any opening sequence, a scene so powerful,
in part, because we know that episodes like this, as unbearable as they seem,
really occurred. Yet in the very next sequence of events, we discover ourselves
in an almost idyllic pastoral world, where local farmers seem to exist miles
away from the chaos of the road. Here a young boy, Michel Dollé (the wonderful
child actor Georges Poujouly) keeps watch over the family cows. Suddenly a
horse, still carrying part of his cart, rushes into this “other” world,
confusing the rustics, who cannot explain its presence in their simple
paradise. Michel’s brother attempts to stop the interruptive horse—against the
cries Madame Dollé (Suzanne Courtal) to leave him alone since is clearly a
“warhorse”—and is kicked by the terrified beast in his stomach. The adults rush
to his side, lifting his pained body to take him back to the house. In the
upheaval, one of the cows bolts, chased by Michel. The cow quickly moves to the
river, stopping for a moment by Paulette who has just retrieved her dead dog’s
body. The boy, suddenly coming upon her, chastises her for not stopping the
cow, while, nonetheless asking her who she is and why she is there. For the
first time in the film, Paulette speaks, finally able to communicate to someone
nearer her own age (Michel is 10) and, having finally retrieved the cow, Michel
consoles the young child for the loss of her dog and parents, promising her
another dog as he takes her to the family house.
So has
Clement, in two marvelous sequences, presented us two entirely different worlds
that are only tangentially related. The world of the Dollés and the
argumentative Gouard’s next door is one of utter poverty, the entire family
dressed in rags, their house filthy, a fly drowned in a glass of milk which
they offer the thirsty child. The women immediately comment on the beauty and
cleanliness of Paulette’s dress. But despite their often coarse and seemingly
unfeeling demeanors, they quickly determine to take the poor girl in, feeding
her, offering her love, and even sacrificing their own bedding. A particularly
close relationship quickly develops between the two children, as Michel, giving
up his own rooftop bed, seems to be the only one who can console the tired and
frightened five-year-old.
We also
soon discover that, despite the near complete ignorance of the rest of his
family, Michel is a good student, both in school learning and in the religious
instruction of the local priest. Paulette, it appears, has never encountered
church doctrine, and is quickly taught prayers and religious catechism by
Michel. (Roger Ebert suggests that Paulette may have been Jewish, and Michel's
teaching her the catechism and her own later adoption of the Dollé name may
save her life). Indeed, as the adult family members go about their daily
business, the two children become closer and closer, Michel almost taking on
Paulette not only as a sister, but as a kind of future mate—the one aspect of
Clement’s film that I found difficult to swallow. Despite the slightly forced
intimacy between the two, however, we can accept it because the magical world
the two children create is parallel to but so different from the violece—the
violence growing out of war and out the bitter realities of peasant life (the
Dollés relationship with their neighbors, the Gouards might almost remind one
of the American Hatfields and McCoys)—surrounding them. And yet, like the
worlds we have encountered in the first scenes—the world of the refugees and
the world of the local farmers—the imaginative existence of the children
inevitably comes into contact and crosses into the world of the adults.

After
Michel explains to Paulette that she cannot again see her parents who have by
now been buried, she suddenly desires the same for her dog, attempting to take
an ax to the hard ground. Michel interrupts her efforts, taking into an old
mill where he helps her bury her dog. When she asks for a cross, he quickly
constructs one out of two sticks. And when she feels that her dog will be
lonely, Michel steals a vole from the local owl's nest, burying it next to the
dog. So begins a terrifying and yet enchanting story at the center of this film
of the children’s growing fascination with death, as they add animal after
animal to their small “forbidden” cemetery, a chick (which despite Paulette’s
insistence he not kill any animal, he has probably strangled in order to please
her), a cockroach (which he denies he has killed: “I didn’t. It was a bomb that
killed him.”), and other animals, each buried, their graves marked with paper
signs created by Michel.
When Michel’s brother, Georges (Jacques
Marin) dies of complications from the horse’s kick, the children accompany the
whole family to the local church, wherein Paulette discovers a whole world of
beautiful crosses (both the crosses within the church and outside in the
cemetery), she demands they borrow some of these lovely objects for their own
sacred shrine.
With stubborn fearlessness, Michel and
Paulette steal out in the night, the sky lit up with German rockets, to fill a
wheelbarrow with stolen crosses, including the one which graces Georges’ new
plot. When the Dollé family, memorializing their son the next day, discover the
cross and grave marker missing, they blame their neighbors; and when the
Gouards, not to be outdone in the care of their family plots, show up at the
same cemetery, the father (Lucien Hubert) attacks the Gouard plot, destroying
their own cross. A terrible fight within an open grave follows, with the priest
finally resolving the mystery of the missing crosses by naming Michel, whom he
has caught the previous day attempting to steal the cross from the church altar.
Michel disappears for the night, slipping
into the house only to report to Paulette that he has finally finished the
children’s glorious animal cemetery. But the following morning he is discovered
by his father and nearly beaten—saved only by the fact that police show up to
the house. Presuming the Gouards have reported him, Dollé further threatens his
disobedient son. But when it is announced that they have come to take away
Paulette to an orphanage, Michel attempts to broker a deal: he will tell where
the crosses are if they agree to keep Paulette. The father agrees.
As all children know, however, adults
are not always true to their word—they lie, they hate, they kill—and Dollé
signs the document releasing Paulette to police custody, Michel running off to
destroy the children’s sacred place, tossing the stolen crosses in to the river,
just as others have as discarded Paulette’s beloved dog.
The last scene is, in some respects, is as
painful as the film’s first. In a large train station, a Red Cross nun places a
“marker” upon her new charge, Paulette, as she goes off to temporarily finish
some paperwork, demanding the girl remain where she is to wait. A reunited
couple brings a woman in the crowd to call “Michel, Michel!” as Paulette stands
up to see if it is her Michel who has
arrived. He is nowhere in sight, but the child cannot resist moving forward
into the crowd with her own pleading voice calling out the same name. We cannot
know whether she will attempt to return to the Dollé farm or whether she must
wait years to attempt a reunion with her partner in their forbidden games. All
we can know is that she has again lost what matters most in her ever-shrinking
world.
Los Angeles, July
30, 2012
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