Great Films, Too Little Seen

Two films recently released as part of the Criterion Collection are the kind that you can't get out of your head--or at least I couldn't after I saw each of them years and years ago.  They are both focus on the effect of war on children--in fact, one particular child in each.

In a review of the current Pan's Labyrinth, Ella Taylor notes that the main character, Ofelia is:

a little girl whose anxious dark eyes recall those of that other dreamy daughter of the fascist era — the Frankenstein-obsessed Ana from Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive  

Both films center on a young girl  retreating into a world of fantasy & imagination in the face of war.  6 year old Ana, played by Ana Torrent, is mesmerized by Boris Karloff's portrayal of the misunderstood monster in Frankenstein as she watches the film at a screening of the film in her small Spanish town. After her mischievous older sister tells her a similar monster is hiding somewhere nearby, Ana becomes obsessed with finding and helping it.  Reviewing the DVD,  A.O. Scott of the New York Times said that Spirit of the Beehive is an 'extraordinary film, impossible to forget' (looks like I wasn't the only one!) and Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune said that Ana Torrent turns in a 'stunning' performance in a 'great film, too little seen'.   

 

The second film is  Forbidden Games, the 1952 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film.  Reviewing the film at the time of it's original release, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote:

It had been the vague hope of many that the French would eventually come through with a film which would boom such shattering comment upon the tragedy and irony of World War II as their memorable "Grand Illusion" did for World War I. That hope at last has been realized.

In this case, the film introduces us to 5 year old Paulette, played by Brigitte Fossey--in 'a performance that rips the heart out with its simplicity and sincerity'--who has been orphaned by the war and is taken in by a family in a rural French village.  There, she is befriended by 11 year old Michel, and the two of them--after burying her pet dog, who died after the same air attack that killed her parents--begin an elaborate  graveyard for animals, largely because of Paulette's fascination with the symbols of death.

Again, Bosley Crowther:

...this film finds its area for comment upon the damage that has been done to humankind in the seemingly innocent realm of farmers and children in the undisturbed countryside. The towering symbol of the war's vast devastation is one little 5-year-old girl.