The Red Balloon

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The Red Balloon
File:Red balloon.jpg
DVD cover
Directed by Albert Lamorisse
Produced by Albert Lamorisse
Screenplay by Albert Lamorisse
Starring Pascal Lamorisse
Music by Maurice Leroux
Cinematography Edmond Séchan
Edited by Pierre Gillette
Production
company
Films Montsouris
Distributed by Films Montsouris
Release dates
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  • 19 October 1956 (1956-10-19) (France)
Running time
34 minutes
Country France
Language French

The Red Balloon (French: Le Ballon rouge) is a 1956 fantasy featurette directed by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse.[1]

The thirty-four-minute short, which follows the adventures of a young boy who one day finds a sentient, mute, red balloon, was filmed in the Ménilmontant neighbourhood of Paris.

It won numerous awards, including an Oscar for Lamorisse for writing the best original screenplay in 1956 and the Palme d'Or for short films at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. The film also became popular with children and educators. This is the only short film to win the Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) and to receive a nomination for anything besides Best Live Action Short Film.

Lamorisse used his children as actors in the film. His son, Pascal Lamorisse, plays himself in the main role, and his daughter, Sabine, portrays a little girl.

Plot

The film, which has a music score but almost no dialogue, tells of Pascal (Pascal Lamorisse), who, on his way to school one morning, discovers a large helium-filled, extremely spherical, red balloon.

As Pascal plays with his new found toy, he realizes it has a mind and will of its own. It begins to follow him wherever he goes, and not rise, at times floating outside his bedroom window, as his mother will not allow it in their apartment.

The balloon follows Pascal through the streets of Paris, and they draw inquisitive looks from adults and the envy of other children as they wander the streets. At one point the balloon enters his classroom, causing an uproar from his classmates. The noise alerts the principal, who becomes angry with him and locks him up in his office until school is over. At another, he and the balloon encounter a little girl (Sabine Lamorisse) with a blue one that also seems to have a mind of its own, as evidenced by its act of following his.

In their wanderings around the neighborhood, Pascal and the balloon encounter a gang of bullies, who are envious of the latter, and they soon destroy his new friend through the use of slingshots.

The film ends as all the other balloons in Paris come to Pascal's aid and take him on a cluster balloon ride over the city.

Cast

  • Pascal Lamorisse as Himself
  • Georges Sellier
  • Edward Auerbach
  • Vladimir Popov
  • Paul Perey
  • René Marion
  • Sabine Lamorisse as the Little Girl
  • Michel Pezin

Production

The film serves as a color record of the Belleville area of Paris which had fallen into decay by the 1960s, prompting the Parisian government to demolish the area as a slum-clearance effort. Part of the site was built up with housing projects; the remainder was left as wasteland for 20 years. Some of what is seen in the film exists no more: one of the bakeries, the famous Y-shaped staircase situated just beyond the equally famous café "Au Repos de la Montagne," the long-gone steep steps of the passage Julien Lacroix where Pascal finds the balloon initially etc., the waste ground where all the battles took place. Instead of them stands the Parc de Belleville.

Exhibition

The film premiered and opened nationwide in France on October 19, 1956; it was released in the United Kingdom on December 23, 1956 (as the supporting film to the 1956 Royal Performance Film The Battle of the River Plate which ensured it a wide distribution) and was released in the United States on March 11, 1957.

It has been featured in many festivals over the years, including the Wisconsin International Children's Film Festival; the Los Angeles Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival; the Wisconsin Film Festival; and others.

The film, in its American television premiere, was introduced by then-actor Ronald Reagan as an episode of the CBS anthology series General Electric Theater on April 2, 1961.[2]

Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s this film was popular in elementary classrooms throughout the United States and Canada. A four-minute clip is on the rotating list of programming on Classic Arts Showcase.

Reception

Critical response

Since its first release in 1956, the film has generally received overwhelmingly favorable reviews from critics. The film critic for the New York Times, Bosley Crowther, hailed the simple tale and praised director Lamorisse, writing that "Yet with the sensitive cooperation of his own beguiling son and with the gray-blue atmosphere of an old Paris quarter as the background for the shiny balloon, he has got here a tender, humorous drama of the ingenuousness of a child and, indeed, a poignant symbolization of dreams and the cruelty of those who puncture them."[3]

When the film was re-released in the United States in late 2006 by Janus Films, Entertainment Weekly magazine film critic Owen Gleiberman praised its direction and simple story line that reminded him of his youth, and wrote, "More than any other children's film, The Red Balloon turns me into a kid again whenever I see it...[to] see The Red Balloon is to laugh, and cry, at the impossible joy of being a child again."[4]

Film critic Brian Gibson wrote, "So far, this seems a post-Occupation France happy to forget the blood and death of Hitler's war a decade earlier. But soon people’s occasional, playful efforts to grab the floating, carefree balloon become grasping and destructive. In a gorgeous sequence, light streaming down alleys as children's shoes clack and clatter on the cobblestones, the balloon bouncing between the walls, Pascal is hunted down for his floating pet. The film's ballooning sense of hope and freedom is deflated by a fierce, squabbling mass. Then, fortunately, Lamorisse's film floats off, with the breeze of magic-realism, into a feeling of escape and peace, The Red Balloon taking hold of Pascal, lifting him out of this rigid, petty, earthbound life."[5]

In a review in The Washington Post, critic Philip Kennicott had a cynical view: "[The film takes] place in a world of lies. Innocent lies? Not necessarily. The Red Balloon may be the most seamless fusion of capitalism and Christianity ever put on film. A young boy invests in a red balloon the love of which places him on the outside of society. The balloon is hunted down and killed on a barren hilltop–-think Calvary–-by a mob of cruel boys. The ending, a bizarre emotional sucker punch, is straight out of the New Testament. Thus is investment rewarded-–with Christian transcendence or, at least, an old-fashioned Assumption. This might be sweet. Or it might be a very cynical reduction of the primary impulse to religious faith."[6]

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 95% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on twenty reviews."[7]

Accolades

Awards

Other Accolades

  • Best Film of the Decade Educational Film Award.[13]

Video and DVD

The film was first released on VHS by Embassy Home Entertainment in 1984. A laserdisc of it was later released by The Criterion Collection in 1986, and was produced by Criterion, Janus Films, and Voyager Press. Included in it was Lamorisse's award-winning short White Mane (1953). A DVD version became available in 2008, and a Blu-Ray version was released in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2010; it has now been confirmed as region-free.[14][15]

Related releases

A tie-in book was published, using black and white and color stills from the film. A soundtrack, featuring music adapted from the film by Lamorisse, was released on the Nonesuch Records label.

In 1960, Albert Lamorisse released a second film, Stowaway in the Sky, which also starred his son Pascal and was a spiritual successor to The Red Balloon.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's 2007 film Flight of the Red Balloon is a direct homage to The Red Balloon.

Adaptations

It was adapted for the stage by Anthony Clark, and was performed at the Royal National Theatre in 1996.[16] It has inspired Flight of the Red Balloon, a 2007 French feature film, directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien and starring Juliette Binoche.

References

  1. Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). The Red Balloon at IMDb.
  2. The Red Balloon at AllMovie
  3. Crowther, Bosley. The New York Times. March 12, 1957. Accessed July 29, 2013.
  4. Gleiberman, Owen. Entertainment Weekly, "Hope Floats," November 30, 2007. Accessed July 29, 2013.
  5. Gibson, Brian. Vue Weekly, "What childhood films are these?" Issue #634: Jingle Bell Rock!, December 11, 2007. Accessed July 29, 2013.
  6. Kennicott, Philip. The Washington Post, "Red Balloon and White Mane: Childhood Colored by Adult Cynicism," November 23, 2007; Page C01. Accessed July 29, 2013.
  7. The Red Balloon at Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed July 29, 2013.
  8. The Red Balloon, IMDb, Awards section, ibid.
  9. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found..
  10. The Red Balloon, IMDb, Awards section, ibid.
  11. BAFTA. Film: Special Award in 1957 (competitive), at the official web site of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
  12. National Board of Review. Awards for 1957, NBR web site. Accessed: July 29, 2013.
  13. Note is written on an English credited copy of the film. No reliable web source for this information.
  14. The Red Balloon at Janus Films; web site includes trailer of film for viewing. Accessed: July 29, 2013.
  15. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found..
  16. The Red Balloon, Anthony Clark. London: Oberon Books ,2000, ISBN 978-1-84002-079-3

External links