because it had been screened at Cannes; it ended up receiving the Golden Lion, the Festival's highest prize. Upon its release, it was lambasted by some, who said it was a "vicious and unfair picture of the peasantry of France"; in France, 4,910,835 theater tickets were sold, making the most successful film at the French box office in 1952. Following its December 1952 release in the United States, Bosley Crowther called it a film with "the irony of a Grand Illusion, the authenticity of a Harvest and the finesse of French films at their best"; according to Crowther, the film is a "brilliant and devastating drama of the tragic frailties of men, clear and uncorrupted by sentimentality or dogmatism in its candid view of life." At the 25th Academy Awards, Forbidden Games won an out-of-competition Special Award as Best Foreign Language Film. In December 1952, at the 24th National Board of Review Awards it was chosen as one of that year's five top foreign films. At the 1952 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, it won for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1954, it was BAFTA's Best Film from any Source; in 1955, at the 27th Academy Awards, François Boyer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story; Philip Yordan won, for his work on Broken Lance. Decades after its release, David Ehrenstein called it "deeply touching" and wrote: "Fossey's is quite simply one of the most uncanny pieces of acting ever attempted by a youngster. Clément’s sensitivity doubtless accounts for much of what we see here, but the rest is clearly Fossey’s own." Roger Ebert added the film to his Great Movies collection in 2005, writing: "Movies like Clement's "Forbidden Games" cannot work unless they are allowed to be completely simple, without guile, transparent. Despite the scenes I have described, it is never a tear-jerker. It doesn't try to create emotions, but to observe them." Soundtrack The main theme of the soundtrack is a guitar arrangement of the melody "Romance". Home media Forbidden Games was released on Laserdisc in 1988 by Criterion Collection (under license of Turner and MGM/UA Home Video), who later also released it on DVD in 2004 by license of Warner Bros. and Turner Entertainment Co. References External links Forbidden Games: Death and the Maiden an essay by Peter Matthews at the Criterion Collection 1950s French-language films 1950s war drama films 1952 drama films 1952