Literary Nonfiction. Cinema Studies. Literary & Cinematic Analysis. This book examines seven French language films, produced between 1952-1991 by well-known directors, which have enjoyed considerable popular and critical success. In these films--Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games), a film by René Clément based on the story by François Boyer; Les Quatre cents coups (The Four Hundred Blows) by François Truffaut; Rue Cases-Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley), a film by Euzhan Palcy based on the novel Black Shack Alley by Joseph Zobel; Le Grand-Chemin (The Grand Highway) by Jean-Loup Hubert; Au Revoir les enfants (Good-bye, Children) by Louis Malle; La Gloire de mon père (My Father's Glory) and Le Château de ma mère (My Mother's Castle), films by Yves Robert based on Souvenirs d'Enfance (Memories of Childhood) by Marcel Pagno--one finds a unifying common denominator: childhood. During these years French society was in a sense rediscovering itself through the innocence and vulnerability of children. This study highlights the narrative styles of the literary works and their filmic adaptations by analyzing temporal schemes, subjectivity of narration and focalization, child-heroes defined by their entourages, rites of passage, the meeting of childhood and myth, childhood as the source of literary and cinematographic variations, and the critical view of society and the human condition presented by each filmmaker. This study is richly illustrated with stills from the various films.