A Balloon in Need Is a Friend Indeed

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The New York Sun

It’s no surprise that “The Red Balloon” has become a classic children’s story (both on screen and in its book version). The 36-minute short film from 1956 is essentially ground zero for several comfy standbys of old-school children’s literature: It features a child’s-eye view of a metropolis (Paris), a run-of-the-town jaunt through its streets, a secret friend who saves the day, blooming bright colors, and a grumpy schoolmaster. No doubt, too, the wonder and joy that the movie arouses in children taps that welter of emotions you felt the first time you let go of a balloon just to see what would happen.

The photographer and documentarian Albert Lamorisse (1922–70) directed “The Red Balloon” and another tale of independence and friendship, “White Mane,” released three years earlier. Starting today, Film Forum will screen the pair for 10 days in fresh restorations (courtesy of Janus Films) and attempt to unite junior and so-called grown-up cinephiles.

A little more than 50 years ago, “Red Balloon” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and this year, the Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien unveiled his lovely semi-reworking, “Flight of the Red Balloon.” For Mr. Hou and others, “The Red Balloon” is an emblem of Paris and the naïve fantasies of childhood, something almost pre-verbal in one’s memory. Indeed, the short film, nearly dialogue-free, opens on the storybook image of a silhouetted schoolboy on a street overlooking the city.

Flanked by a cat and a towering lamppost, he is about to amble down the stairs, where he’ll find his buoyant playmate and clear his school-day fog with random street rambling.

The boy (played by Pascal Lamorisse, the director’s son) finds the balloon to be magically autonomous, loyal, and mischievous. Through the schoolyard, to the bakery, but definitely not allowed on the local bus line, it’s always hovering benevolently, sometimes wryly, and at one point it even skirt-chases a shapely blue counterpart. Its clown’s-nose sphere pops out of every shot, especially since the hero, in his school uniform, looks dipped in ash. Lamorisse also quietly rhymes the shape with a stoplight, a sign, and, at an antique alley full of bric-a-brac, a portrait of a girl with a hoop.

The lark of it all and the patient silent-comedy setups tend to keep youngsters open-mouthed, and the potent nostalgia capsule of the long-demolished Belleville locations (or cobblestone Paris, generally) pacifies the chaperones. Ironically, it’s a mob of children, frolicking in postwar rubble, that drives the boy and his balloon to the wall, leading to the airborne finale. The adults aren’t the parade of scolds and cranks that many remember; although Mom dumps the balloon out the window, there’s also the sweet gent who shelters the duo with an umbrella for a few shuffling blocks.

Watching “The Red Balloon” might be a bitter pill for those who remember it as an imposed classroom staple, but you’re not alone. François Truffaut decried the favorite as hopelessly artificial: “All it takes is to oppose a nice little boy against a few villains, with an appealing little anima or a pretty little ‘something.'” (The director of “The 400 Blows” suggested alternative scenarios: “The little Brazilian whose sack of coffee has been ripped open by villainous soldiers. Or how about the little Chinese who loses his paganism?”)

Truffaut also called “The Red Balloon” one of the most beautiful color films ever made, but even the alabaster brilliance of Lamorisse’s earlier black-and-white short, “White Mane,” might not offset pangs of cynicism. On the plains and marshes of Camargue in the south of France, young Folco (Alain Emery) tames a wild horse that bucks the local band of cowboys — and shares his sheepdog-bangs hairstyle.

An incongruously gravelly voiceover (newly recorded) dunks the viewer in every sentiment, down to “the wonderful place where men and horses live as friends always.” Admittedly, Folco’s kid brother is adorable and spontaneous, and one has to appreciate an earlier age of children’s movie that introduced a bunny only to rackgrill it. But this half of Film Forum’s double bill might not grab both tiers of the audience quite like “The Red Balloon.”

Lamorisse went on to invent new methods of airborne photography, and died in a helicopter accident while working on a documentary about Iran (later completed by others). The restless filmmaker also invented the strategy game originally titled “World Conquest,” now known as “Risk,” but he remains best known for that childhood memory capsule known as “The Red Balloon.”

Through November 25 (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8110).


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