The Red Balloon (Lamorisse, 1956): France

Reviewed by Nitsa Pomerleau. Viewed on DVD.

The film that won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1957 contained ten lines of dialogue at most. The Red Balloon is writer-director Albert Lamorisse’s uncompromised classic, which in a resonant absence of words offers the viewer tender return to a child’s perspective and to a neighborhood of Paris that no longer exists.

The narrative is beautifully simple: a young boy named Pascal clambers up a lamppost to untie a large candy-red balloon, and the two become friends. As the Balloon floats through the streets of Ménilmontant it reveals a playful and mischievous intelligence—taunting a vile schoolmaster and engaging in a balloon’s rendition of hide-and-seek. The story drifts from Pascal’s school to a flea market, the rain, into a pâtisserie, outside an apartment window; with the two friends frequently fleeing a mob of kicking, screaming, snatching students (truly, could there be a more universal villain?)

As a filmmaker with documentary experience, Lamorisse brings a sense of naturalism and clarity to The Red Balloon that is culturally, generationally transcendent. He draws an unforced, instantly loveable performance from his own five-year old son Pascal and daughter Sabine. In regards to the balloon, I am pleasantly lost in the mentality of a five year old struggling to discover the magician’s trick… apparently some very fine thread and crafty editing was involved.

Yet the fact that Lamorisse manifested (with practically primitive special effects) a childish fantasy of a balloon as companion, on the screen, deserves applause. Furthermore, he imbues the relationship with emotion and delicacy—in a language that is instinctual—and very cinematic. The composition of  every shot is gorgeous: natural light streams through cobbled alleys as little Pascal swaddles onwards, his head tilted to the huge balloon overhead, whose bright redness bobs sublimely against the tedium of gray stone and ether. Complementing this visual yarn is the quiet rhythm to Pascal’s ambling footsteps and Maurice Le Roux’s woodwind score. The film progresses as a balloon would: slowly, delicately, touching here and there, and always in motion.

For those of you with a vague inkling that you might have seen this film somewhere— you probably have. The 16mm print has been widely distributed in America and a rainy-day staple for elementary schools since the 1970s.  As the only short film to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay, as well as the Palme d’Or (for short films) at Cannes, The Red Balloon has served as a source of inspiration for children’s and art films for the last 50 years. In fact, I’ll eagerly remind you this year’s Oscar winner, Up, is based inside a house that flies with hundreds of multi-colored helium balloons! Just as our Pascal might have done in the final scene!! Even more exciting is Flight of the Red Balloon, an homage  of sorts to Lamorisse’ film by one of my favorite directors, Hou Hsiao-Hsien (and which prompted my reviewing of the classic).

The Red Balloon continues to play as an open-ended reverie of a young boy whose experience of love and friendship is one audiences of all ages will connect with. Am I a nostalgic sap? Yes. Still, the film is magical and worth a second viewing.

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Published:
03.18.10 / 10am
Category:
DVD, Films, Short films