RED BALLON THEORY
RED BALLON THEORY
Francois Truffaut
(sometimes known as the demolisher of French cinema when he worked as a
critic), writing in Cahiers du Cinema, was scathing:
I saw Le Ballon
Rouge three times in the space of six months, so there’s nothing
mysterious to me about the unfailing enthusiasm it arouses. I know that if I
criticize it severely I risk offending my most faithful readers and singling
myself out in the worst possible way. When a work is universally admired, one
hesitates to run counter to popular opinion. One might be tempted to pretend so
as not to stand all alone.
There’s no question
that Le Ballon Rouge, a love story about a little boy and a balloon
which follows him around everywhere like a puppy, is a carefully made film, and
admirably photographed, if not well directed; also, the boy mugs as little as
possible. Having said that, there is, in my opinion, neither poetry nor fantasy
nor sensitivity nor truth in this film—not real poetry, fantasy, sensitivity,
or truth.
When Walt Disney bestowed human speech and reactions on animals, he cheated the
animals and the human beings as well. He betrayed La Fontaine by caricaturing
him—but then no one takes Disney for a poet. I believe firmly that nothing
poetic can be born derivatively; we should despise modern artefacts which
resemble something else: pens that are really cigarette lighters, leather-bound
books that are cigarette boxes, etcetera.
In fact he had no mercy
for the sentimentality of Albert Lamorisse’s Le Ballon Rouge –
‘like a film of Minou Drouet made for Marie-Chantal.’
He viewed the film as
having no emotional truth and that it was, in his word, ‘phoney.’ Not that he
had a problem with films that use tricks per se but that
Lamorisse was trying too hard to present this as real, with too many
telegraphed scenes, while presenting an ending that was far from real. Nor did
I think that the balloon was the boy’s friend (only friend?) as was argued. He
saw the balloon as a servant, always several steps behind the boy.
The First English Language Review (at least a
lengthy one).
(From Sight and
Sound. January 1957.)
RED BALLOON ( Films de France). The films of Albert Lamorisse all tell
much the same story: that of a child and his companion (Bim, the
donkey, Crin Blanc, the horse, or a red balloon) at grips with the
malice of “the others’’. Here a little boy finds a balloon. He wins its
confidence, and it follows him faithfully wherever he goes. But the miraculous
friendship must have its tragic ending, and a gang of urchins stone the balloon
to death.
There is a certain
ambiguity about the film, in that Lamorisse seems undecided as to whether he is
addressing himself to children or to grown-ups. For the child’s eye, Lamorisse
has stylised his characters, presenting a world sharply and conventionally
divided between the good and the bad. To attract the adult section of his
audience, he emphasises formal effects, strives for a minute polish, spices his
gags with a subtle element of malice. His characters move through the film
along paths chosen solely for their elegance; their actions, expressed through
superb images, often have little purpose other than to look “artistic’’. But
the poetic qualities of a child’s world lie, above all, in the spontaneity of
its fantasy (in the cinema, of course, in the illusion of spontaneity); and it
is precisely this quality that Lamorisse loses in the conscious
over-elaboration of his images.
In spite of these
reservations, Le Ballon Rouge is an unusually pleasing film.
The colour is among the best the French cinema has produced; and the awakening
of Paris in a blueish haze, the scarlet blob of the balloon caressing the
crumbling facades of La Butte, are unforgettable images. One admires equally
the skill with which the director has overcome the problem of “humanising’’ the
toy. This has been managed without any tricks of editing, and the little boy
and the obedient balloon appear together in the same shot. In Le Ballon
Rouge, Lamorisse has attempted one of the cinema’s most taxing subjects: the
vague, marvellous territory of a child’s daydreams. When he is able to put
aside his present paralysing preoccupation with form, he will give us a true
poetic film. —Claude Goretta.
Synopsis (with further embellishments by
Albert Lamorisse)
Pascal lives with his
mother but, because he has no brothers and sisters, at times he feels lonely,
even sad. On his way to school one morning, the young Pascal finds a red
balloon hooked on a street lamp in the Belleville district of Paris. He
scrambles up the lamp, unties the balloon, and tries to go to school on his
usual bus that runs down rue de Menlimontant. This time the conductor tells him
that he cannot board while holding the balloon. Not wishing to lose the
balloon, he has no choice but to run to school.
Pascal enters the
classroom after leaving the balloon with the school’s janitor. After school, he
retrieves the balloon, holds the string tightly, and returns home on rue du
Transvaal. He takes the balloon into the family apartment but his mother won’t
allow it to stay inside, chases it out but instead of blowing away it hovers
outside the window.
Pascal soon discovers
that the red balloon has become his companion, sometimes a cheeky friend. It
follows him wherever he goes: to school, out shopping, or wandering through
Paris. One day on the way home Pascal stops to look at a picture in a pavement
exhibit. It shows a little girl with a hoop. Pascal thinks how nice it would be
to have a sister like that little girl.
Another time, he and his
mother go to church and the balloon follows them inside. The pastor is not
pleased and Pascal and the balloon are chased out. On the way home Pascal stops
at a boulangerie for a piece of cake.
The other children of
Belleville have become jealous of Pascal and his relationship with the balloon.
They want the balloon for themselves. When Pascal is in the shop – and the
balloon is waiting outside – they try to capture it. At one point the boys have
the balloon but Pascal gets it back and they start a cat and mouse chase
through the alleys of Belleville. Ultimately Pascal is unsuccessful, is caught,
and the children throw stones and use catapaults aimed at the balloon, Pascal
releases the balloon, tells it to escape but the balloon stays with him.
Finally, a stone hits the
balloon and it deflates in almost withering agony. Pascal is left to cry. Then
a strange and unexpected thing happens. Colourful balloons from all over the
city flock to him. It is a revolt of all the captive balloons. He gathers them
up, holds on tight and he soars high into the sky, making his escape from the
world and rising above the evil of the boys below.
Some Thoughts
The Japanese poet
Shuntaro Tanikawa (谷川 俊太郎) once commented that it is a movie that is more akin to a poem,
arguing that there is a purity about the work that depicts the relationship
between a child and his world in a simple story without adornment. But a poem
that is almost wordless. (Although it is not soundless as it allows Maurice Le
Roux score to soar and it uses ambient sound to great effect.) And like a poem
there are blanks that, in this instance, the viewer has to fill.
‘Recently, I translated a
picture book called Murasaki Fusen, but when children with an
incurable disease are told by the doctor to draw a picture of their current
feelings, almost without exception, they drew blue-purple balloons. It’s a
little strange, but I heard that balloons are a symbol of the human soul, and
when I watched The Red Balloon I felt this. Pascal boy was
lucky enough to build a friendship with a balloon. That’s why in the end he
soars into the sky to escape the hate he has seen on earth. It is the ascent of
his soul no matter how you think about it. It is not a happy ending.’
Like William
Golding’s The Lord of the Flies it shows how
childhood innocence can turn very quickly to aggression and the rule of the mob
even at a time when Paris was only just emerging from Nazi oppression. At the
same time, it also reminds adults of something that we often lose as we get
older – the ability to find magic in the world.
Le Ballon Rouge premiered in France on 19 October, 1956.
Three weeks later the
film was first shown in England in November 1956 at the Odeon in Leicester
Square – the country’s most prestigious cinema. It was as the support film
for Battle Of The River Plate. Other reviews of the film all
remarked on the use of colour. “As for the Technicolour camera work, nothing
finer has been seen in any film long or short.’ (Kinematograph Weekly November
1956.) Later it went on general release in the UK continuing as the support
film for Battle Of The River Plate.
Interestingly the
director Ken Russell’s second foray into cinema was a short, and far more
optimistic film Amelia and the Angel. Sight and Sound magazine
wrote that ‘…it has the freshness and vitality which freedom from box-office
worries should bring. Inspired, Russell admits, by The Red Balloon,
it avoids the forced charm and cleverness of Lamorisse’s film.’ However it does
have a happy ending.
The Taiwanese director
Hou Hsiao Hsien made a film that in part was inspired by The Red
Balloon. In an interview he remarked:
My first reaction on seeing it was that it showed certain realities of Paris in
1956. It shows the city’s ambience, and the social system of the time. The
focus on the various constraints surrounding the child is revealing: he is
forbidden to do things at home, at school, on the bus…He doesn’t have enough
space to live, but at the same time the film gives a sense of the new, post-war
freedoms around him. Kids today don’t have such freedoms. I didn’t think of the
red balloon itself
in metaphorical terms; I think the film shows cruel realities.
An interview with Pascal Lamorisse by Kuriko
Satoy
(Carried out in 2008.)
The round, glossy and
exquisite size of red balloons is very impressive. How was this unique balloon
born?
“The balloon is actually
doubled. There is a yellow balloon inside the red balloon, and it inflates at
the same time. But before that, we applied varnish to it and made it glossy. It
is very shiny when inflated, so as to reflect the surrounding scenery. The use
of a double balloon means it doesn’t become transparent, and it makes the red
shine more.”
Why red?
“When this movie was made
in 1956, it was only about 10 years after the war, and the whole city had no
colour as it has now, and it was almost grey. That’s why he used vivid colours
that look good visually. My father was drawn to the visual. He drew pictures
and took pictures.”
Certainly, the colour of
the city is pale, and only the balloons take on a vivid colour, but it’s not
set up to make it look special is it?
“The look of the city was
like that and shows the state of Paris at that time. It was often shot using a
hidden camera. Most of the passers-by in the movie are real. Unfortunately, the
Menilmontant area used to shoot the movie has now been demolished and is due
for redevelopment. It’s a pity that it wasn’t protected like Montmartre.”
The balloon moved as if
it were alive. Can you tell me about the shooting technology as far as you
know? Of course, that balloon is not a mechanical device, is it?
“No. In that era, there
was no computer programming or green or blue screens. I can’t reveal the secret
of shooting here, it will destroy the audience’s dream when watching the movie,
but in fact it is due to very simple ingenuity. A calculation was made of the
condition of light and wind, and various artisanal technique were employed. My
father was surrounded by wonderful engineers.”
I’m especially surprised
by the last scene, but did you really fly yourself?
“That’s also a trade
secret (laughs). Because movies give magic and emotion. It’s better not to know
that it will ruin it, right? Let’s just say that it floated in the air a little
bit here. What was important to my father was to show that the balloon had a
heart. So you can’t have the impression that it’s run by a computer. Because
balloons are living things, the boy and their hearts go together. The balloon
is the boy’s partner, and it is also a symbol of freedom.”
The naughty children
break the balloon with stones, but it is impressive that it goes slowly and
little by little instead of bursting. Is that mechanism also a trade secret?
“I think it’s certain
that we made a hole, but I don’t remember exactly how we actually did it. It’s
true that slowly withering is as if humans are ageing and the lights of life
are going out.”
That scene is also a
shock because the balloon looks alive.
“Yes, but unfortunately
in this world, it is said that a person is killed somewhere every second.
That’s why this movie expresses very important things in a metaphorical way.
About the nature of human beings, the environment surrounding children in that
era, the way of school education, etc. The balloon itself is also a symbol of
creativity and freedom. I think that the red balloon was like a bubble of
freedom for the boy. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, freedom and
innocence are often erased.
Of course, there are various
ways of looking at movies, so I don’t want to say that you should look at The
Red Balloon like this. However, my father was making a movie with this
intention. He was against all extreme ways of thinking. And he resolutely
disagreed with the situation where humanity is not respected. For example,
there is a scene where children flock to balloons. They want balloons, but they
can’t communicate with balloons. Just by making the balloon your own and trying
to control it, you don’t share anything with the balloon. Or can you say that
you want to love but don’t know how to love?.”
Can you say that your
father didn’t lose his child’s point of view?
“That’s right. he once
wrote a separate book where children didn’t come out, but I think he always had
a kind of innocence and purity. Also, he was good at chess, so he was very
focussed and had the ability to read ahead. Rather than doing something with
intuition, he was always thinking about various things. When I was a child, he
told me the story he made up every day at the dinner table. It was a
continuation, and it was a tremendous amount. I still have what I wrote down at
that time. My father was really a mass of imagination.”
Was the director’s face
and his father’s face different?
“As a director, he was
rigorous and very meticulous. But as a father, he was a very generous person.
He respected the whole family and was a person who cherished our bonds very
much. So it was natural for me to work with my father. I didn’t really want to
be an actor. Just like other children are with my father, I just went to the
locations and worked. My father also had a quality of never giving up on
things. He liked samurai movies, and he may have had something like a samurai
quality. No matter how difficult it was during shooting, he continued to be
patient and definitely got the results he wanted. ”
Alan Emry, who played the
leading role in White Horse, seemed to think that he couldn’t really act at
that time, but your father pulled out the best from him. How was it in your
case? Did he give detailed acting instruction?
“‘Red Balloon’ is
different from ‘White Horse’, where everything was written in the script. My
father explained the situation on the spot, and I acted as if it was my true
story. Rather than acting, it can be said that it was me. My father also told
me that I could do as I wanted, but the scene setting was faithful to the
script. But that was not difficult. My mother also made costumes and often came
to the locations, so for me, I really felt like I was making it together as a
family. Probably the most difficult thing was the fight scene. Because we were
children, we couldn’t “pretend”, so we were serious about it (laughs). In fact,
50 years later, I met one of the boys who were fighting at that time. It’s also
wonderful, isn’t it?”
So how was the film made?
The balloon was sometimes weighted, and sometimes filled with helium instead of
air. And they were often controlled using a thin metal line attached to a long
rod – as well as patient filming, and the clever use of camera angles and
editing.
The deflation can be
achieved by placing a piece of tape over the balloon and then gently piercing
this with a fine needle.
The final sequence shows
Pascal’s feet lifting from the ground (he is raised by the crew) but then a
dummy is used when ‘he’ floats over the city.
Albert Lamorisse:
Director
Albert Lamorisse was born
on January 13, 1922 in Paris. After studying at Ecole de Roche, he became a
student at the IDHEC (Higher Film Academy) and at the same time trained as a
photographer.
His first released work
was the documentary Djerba that recorded the potters and
scenery of Djerba in Tunisia and shot in 1947. In 1949, he released the
45-minute film Bim, le petit âne which depicts the adventure
of an Arab boy and his donkey. This work, which was shot in Djerba again could
not gain distribution until the poet Jacques Prevert discovered its charm. He
wrote a new commentary that enhanced the appeal of the film (and Prevert later
co-authored a photo book that combines Lamorisse’s photos and his poetry).
In 1953, he directed the
second fiction film White Main (Crin-Blanc). This movie
won many awards, including the Short Film Palme d’Or Grand Prize at the Cannes
Film Festival, and made Lamorisse’s name known to the world.
The Red Balloon released in 1956 also won awards including the Cannes International
Film Festival Palme d’Or, and the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. This of
course further enhanced Lamorisse’s reputation.
In 1960, he wrote and
directed his first feature film Stowaway in the Sky (Le Voyage en
ballon). To film it Lamorisse co-invented a new system that enabled aerial
photography from a helicopter without blurring caused by vibrations. Working
with a marine gyroscope specialist Jean Fieux, they developed the Hélivision,
with a three-axis stabilisation system, an early version of the Steadicam.
The film is a travelogue
and Lamorisse went to great trouble to hide intrusions of modern life such as
buildings and roads but without resorting to special effects. Akira Kurosawa
once said it as one of his 100 favourite films. On the other hand, the New
York Times was less complimentary writing, ‘It is all concrete and
conventional, beautiful but eventually repetitious, with a much too arch
narration by Jack Lemmon and some atrocious dubbed English dialogue, a nice
musical score and some rather silly aerial acrobatics that should greatly
please the kids.’
In truth Lamorisse was
never able to match the verve and originality of his early work.
In 1962, he used Jacques
Prevert as a commentator again and directed the 21-minute short documentary Lesonge
Chevaux sauvages (Dream of Wild Horses.)
In 1965, he released his
second long-length drama film Fifi la plume. A thief hired by a
circus troupe who escaped from the police chase is a fantastical comedy in
which he falls in love with the troupe’s The Girl. Helivision also played an
important role in this work.
Since Stowaway in
the Sky, Lamorisse had become evangelical about filmed flight, and the
Hélivision—which, by the midsixties, had been showcased in major Hollywood
films such as Goldfinger and The Sound of Music—was
crucial to Lamorisse’s final three films, all of which are documentaries on
geographical themes. For Paris Jamais Vu (1967), he soared
over Paris, and for Versailles, from the same year, he shot the
palace from a bird’s-eye view.
On June 2, 1970, his
latest documentary Le vent des amoureux (The Lover’s Wind) was
being filmed from a helicopter over a dam near Tehran when the blades of the
helicopter touched an overhead electric cable and it crashed into a lake.
Lamorisse and the pilot died in the accident. His son Pascal was with him but
survived. The film was completed by his widow and released in 1978, eight years
after his death. There is also separate footage on line assembled from the last
footage that Lamorisse shot over the dam.
When he died, The
Red Balloon was still being shown in cinemas from time to time and
also on television – as were a number of his other films.
Edmond Séchan: Director
of Photography
Edmond Séchan was born on
September 20, 1919 in Monpellier, France. His first work was on the
documentary Savage Africa (1950) directed by Jacques DuPont.
He worked with Lamoirisse on Crin-Blanc and again on The
Red Balloon. In the same year, he also filmed the marine documentary The
World of Silence for Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle which became a
landmark film in French cinema history for its use of underwater photography.
He would later move into directing as well as his cinematograhy work. His short
films earned him prizes: Le Haricot, (Short Film Palme d’Or at
Cannes in 1963) and Toine ( a César du meilleur court métrage
in 1981). He belongs to the small group of Frenchmen to have won Oscars: in
1960 with The Golden Fish, produced by Cousteau, in the category
Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, and in 1975 with One-Eyed
Men Are Kings, in collaboration with Michel Leroy.
Truffaut wrote: ‘I would
be remiss if I failed to point out that Le Ballon Rouge is one
of the most beautiful color films ever made, thanks to the extraordinary work
of Edmond Sechan.’
Maurice Leroux: Composer
Born on February 6, 1923
in Paris, France. He studied composition at the Concertoire in Paris and under
Olivier Messiaen. His first film composition was on Crin Blanc, and
then Bad Liaisons (Les Mauvaises Rencontres). In 1956 he
scored Les Possédées before composing the the music of The
Red Balloon.
From 1960 to 1967 he
served as the conductor of the French National Broadcasting Orchestra.
In total he was
responsible for 19 much celebrated original film scores and worked with some
leading directors including The Bitterness (1957/Nicholas
Ray), Akogare (1958/François Truffaut), Presentation
ou Charlotte et son steak (1960/Eric Romer), Little Soldier (1960/Jean
Luc Godard), View from the Bridge (1961/Sydney Lumet),
and Immoral Story (1973/Valerian Polofutsuk). He died in
Avignon on October 19, 1992.
Locations
All the film was shot in
Paris on location with most found in the Belleville distirct of Paris, and with
a concentration at the top of what is now the Parc de Belleville and at the
spot called Belvédère de Belleville. The Parc was where the narrow streets and
alleys are seen in the film. Even then it is clear that this was a rundown area
and in the 1970s it was declared a slum and the buildings demolished.
Developers moved in. New housing blocks were built but much was converted into
the park but at the top it is still possible to basically see where Pascal
first found the balloon, ate cake, and the family apartment still exists on rue
du Transvaal.
The adjacent district of
Ménilmontant was also used as a location.
The best resource for
discovering the specific locations can be found on Flickr here.
But before the film was
released in the UK it was the publishing of the book that started to raise
interest in the story. In the summer of 1956 over 15,000 copies were sold at
12s. 6d despite having had few reviews, and only two in London, in the Observer and
in the New Statesman, the latter suggesting that there was “no
reason why it should not become a classic”.
To help promote the book
to the book seller trade, the publishers Allen & Unwin ‘gave it the fullest
possible treatment with private film show for book-sellers, seven-year-old
Pascal autographing manfully, gas-filled balloons liberated over London and
hundreds of others given away to booksellers.’
With this initial
success, a further 10,000 reprint was planned for mid-October prior to the
film’s release and as demand had shot far ahead of their expectations more were
printed when the film went into cinemas. By the end of 1956 over 30,000 copies
had been sold, which was no mean feat.
Comments
Post a Comment