Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games (1952) is the classic French picture which centers on two youngsters living in rural France in 1940 as German planes invade the air space and drop bombs on various sites in the country.

When death pervades in the sphere of children is what the film is about but, plainly, additional themes obtain as well.  One of them is the ineffectiveness of religion in causing people, such as the peasant family, to behave as they ought.  This goes only so far, however.  Usually the conduct of clergy in Forbidden Games is unobjectionable, and at any rate it isn’t as though Catholicism is not needed in rural France.  But although the kids here play what is easily termed a forbidden game—for it involves theft—adults in those German planes are playing a worse forbidden game involving murder.  It is an extreme on a scale of adult games.

(In French with English subtitles)

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I believe Woody Allen is a damaged man and that 1979’s Manhattan is damaged goods.  That 42-year-old Isaac (Allen) will wait six months for teenaged Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) to return from London without hooking up with another woman, and that Tracy, however pure-hearted, will refuse to take up with any smitten boy during that time, is laughably absurd.  Yet the film subtly and patently wants us to believe this.

Allen’s story is so thin we have to listen to the one-liners to enjoy anything in the film.  Not that the jokes are always good—and the one about the psychiatrist in a coma is tasteless—but heartening wit does spring up.  So does fundamental silliness (Oh, that character played by Michael Murphy!)

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There are a great many problems with the script by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, thus making The Godfather Part II (1974) a near-flop.  Yet it is watchable, I think, because it is powerful.  In this it resembles Hitchcock’s films, and like Hitchcock, Coppola directed cannily.  And numerous people did some very fine acting, from Lee Strasberg to Talia Shire. 

Undeniably Part II is an imaginative movie.  TOO imaginative, but . . . strong in its way.

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Don Siegel got a bit fancy in his directing of the 1971 film, The Beguiled, and that the look is occasionally unpolished is not so bad.  All the same, the film is built on a premise which I must regard as poor:  during the Civil War, the female proprietor of a Southern boardingschool for girls (Geraldine Page) is disinclined to turn a badly wounded Union soldier (Clint Eastwood) over to Southern troops even after he is nursed back to health.  Thus she is so foolish she fails to see what a dangerous situation she is creating, and yet this woman is not supposed to be dumb.

Even beyond the premise, though, there is feeble material.  Not everything comes across convincingly (e.g., the Page character’s belief, if it exists, that the Union soldier must have his leg amputated in order to avoid gangrene).  The final years of Siegel’s career saw a decline in his movies’ quality.  But there are a couple of hard-hitting scenes here, and the performances of Eastwood, Page, Elizabeth Hartman and Pamelyn Ferdin (a youngster) are pleasurably true.

The Beguiled (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not bad but not all that good either, I’ll See You In My Dreams (2015) focuses on a widow and retired teacher, Carol Petersen (Blythe Danner).  A new film by Brett Haley, it presents the Unexpected, in various forms, intruding into the life of an aging person, but without being particularly memorable.

I have a problem with the gifted Danner in that she seems to be acting like a very old, nearly decrepit woman instead of the barely old senior that Carol in fact is (Danner must have been a mere 70 or 71 when the film began to be made).  There are a few scenes of grief which are nicely done by both Danner and director Haley, and the dialogue can be intelligent.  Other people, though, have liked this movie better than I have—it could use more character exploration—and yet, as I said, it’s not bad.