In Banned gamesthe drama of the 1940 exodus serves as a backdrop to the poignant story of an orphaned girl, played by Brigitte Fossey, confronted with the cruelty of war. Seventy years after the release of the film, broadcast Monday November 25 at 8:55 p.m. on Arte, its original music continues to be debated.
Inseparable from the melancholic work of René Clément, rewarded with a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the musical theme of Banned games (1952) also became cult. If this soundtrack has survived the decades, so have the controversies surrounding it. Behind the sweetness and simplicity of this melody lies a vast controversy. Guitarist Narciso Yepes, often credited as the composer, may not be the author. “I wrote this romance for my mother when I was a child“, declared the artist in 1982, as recalled by Radio France. An assertion called into question by musicological analyses.
The authorship of Narciso Yepes is called into doubt by a disturbing comparison with the film Bloody Arenas (1941) by Rouben Mamoulian, for which Alfred Newman composed an original soundtrack. The musical themes of the two films are almost identical, calling into question the idea that the first man created this air of romance from scratch to Forbidden Games. The hypothesis is raised that this famous melody would be a reinterpretation or an arrangement, rather than an original composition.
Narciso, Alfred, Fernando or Matteo?
Some researchers also suggest that the ballad could be much older, attributable to Fernando Sor (1778-1839), a famous Spanish guitarist of the early 19th century. An anonymous manuscript, dated from this period, contains a similar score. Due to the lack of explicit mention of Fernando Sor in this document, his attribution remains uncertain. It could also be Matteo Carcassi (1792-1853), another Spanish guitarist from the same period, puts forward an alternative theory.
Despite debates surrounding its origin, the melody of Banned games owes a large part of its success to Narciso Yepes and his reinterpretation for the cinema. It was notably thanks to the reissue on record in the 1970s that this piece gained worldwide fame, becoming essential in learning classical guitar. If the mystery remains, the emotional impact of this melody remains universal and timeless.
France
