THE SECRET GAME
(Miracle Films) Y Cert: "THIS, I should say straightway, is Les Jeux Interdits-a film which all enthusiasts will know by repute-and beyond any peradventure it is a masterpiece. The principal players are a small boy (Georges Poujouly) and girl (Brigitte Fossey)-aged, I should say, about 10 and 6 respectively-and I do not recall having seen at any time such faultless response to direction as René Clément has coaxed from them. Clément (who made Bataille du Rail, and was assistant to Cocteau in La Belle et la Béte) had a formidable assignment, artistically and psychologically. The story (from the. novel by Francois Boyer) is that of a little child whose parents are machine-gunned from the air on a refugee-choked. road in 1940. Wandering off with her dead puppy in her arms she is befriended by a small boy and finds refuge in a friendly but squalid farmhouse. Here the infant encounters for the first time the rituals of Catholicism and this new fascination, coinciding with the talk of death she hears ail around her-’ and the impulse to have a funeral for her dead uppy-sets the pattern for the secret and foridden game. This is simply the creation of a cemetery for birds and small animals and insects which the two children construct. in a deserted mill. With complete seriousness and rapt absorption they heap earth and patter prayers over dead beetles and moles and birds. ey fashion rude crosses, then, becoming more ambitious, despoil the village cemetery for the genuine article. Jeux Interdits, you perceive, is artistically as well. as psychologically exact~ ing. But I don’t think Clément fails once to maintain, and keep acceptable, the atmosphere of this doubly complex tale-for around the | picture of the children he has had also to draw the somewhat brutish world of the adult peasantry. Though he looks at the latter with a cold eye, his study of the children is infused with pity and a profound sympathy for the defenceless. The Secret Game, too, reminds us of events which should not be forgotten. It’s not a comfortable film, but it’s a great one.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19561005.2.28.1.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 15
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354THE SECRET GAME New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 15
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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