by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2015 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
The film was The Red
Balloon, a 1956 film made in Paris
by Albert Lamorisse, who cast his real-life son Pascal as the human owner of
the titular character, a red balloon that is his only friend; it follows him around,
tries to accompany him to school, hangs out all night outside his bedroom
window so he can fetch it again the next morning, and in general shows
capabilities that tread just on the thin edge of believability without
stretching into the out-and-out supernatural. Lamorisse père both directed and wrote the film, and he won the
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1956 — the only time that award
has been given to a film of less than feature length (34 minutes). The movie
premiered in the U.S. as an episode of the General Electric Theatre TV show — albeit in black-and-white — and while
the U.S. distributor flooded the American school system with 16 mm prints for
audio-visual showings for years I’d only seen it on black-and-white TV and
therefore I had to take it on faith that the balloon was red. In some ways it’s
two different films depending on whether you see it in black-and-white or
color; in black-and-white the atmosphere young Pascal (the character has the
real name of Lamorisse fils) is trying to escape — the world of schoolhouses, buses, bakeries and
other adult environments hostile to him traipsing around with a balloon as his
pet — looks grungier and more oppressive, and in some ways the balloon itself
is a more effective symbol of freedom if it’s not this huge neon-red dot maneuvering itself around
the frame of the film. (The effects were mostly done with wire work, and an
imdb.com “Goofs” contributor identified at least one sequence where the wire
could be seen.)
At the end our little hero is confronted by a gang of bullies
who are determined to get at him by destroying the red balloon; one of them
takes it out with a well-aimed blow from a slingshot (a surprisingly
frightening image for what’s until then been a pretty guileless children’s movie)
and its skin starts to curdle, making it resemble a relief globe of the moon
(well, if the moon were red, anyway), until either he or another of the bullies
— Lamorisse père keeps them powerfully
ambiguous instead of allowing them to become distinct characters — denies the
poor red balloon a decent death by stomping on it. Then, in Lamorisse’s famous
fairy-tale ending, all the
balloons in the Ménilmontant district of Paris (where the film takes place)
depart their owners and flock en masse to little Pascal, raising him above the city and above the petty
hatreds of the kids who bullied him. As a bullied kid myself, I identified with
this film big-time, and seeing it now that I’m an old and jaded adult I still identify with it even though it does become a bit too precious, a bit too cute, at
times. Certainly Albert Lamorisse and his wife Satine lucked out in the genes
department producing their leading man; Pascal is ineffably cute — tow-headed,
not too skinny, not too fat, with a guileless look of innocence on his face and
a bod (especially as shown off by the grey flannel outfit he wears in the first
half) that probably made any NAMBLA members watching this film cream in their
pants. It looks different to me now than it did when I was Pascal Lamorisse’s
age in the film but it still holds up surprisingly well — and it’s just the
right length to sustain interest in its rather slender story (avoiding a
mistake Lamorisse père made
four years later when he attempted a feature-length sequel, also starring his real-life
son).
