The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse

The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse
Blu-ray
Criterion
1953-65 / 1:33.1, 2.35:1
Starring Pascal Lamorisse
Written by Albert Lamorisse, Jacques Prévert, James Agee
Photographed by Edmond Séchan, Maurice Fellous, Guy Tabary
Directed by Albert Lamorisse

The little heroes of Albert Lamorisse’s films are alone but not necessarily lonely, they’re just particular about the company they keep, whether it’s a wild stallion or a brightly colored balloon. Lamorisse said he made films to bring his childhood fantasies to life and his most celebrated efforts, White Mane and The Red Balloon, fulfill that promise; those movies are like waking dreams, serene meditations on the mysterious inner life of a child.

Some took issue with Lamorisse’s magic tricks; Francois Truffaut called The Red Balloon “one of the most beautiful color films ever made” while criticizing the movie as “hopelessly artificial.” But Lamorisse’s flights of fancy aren’t just whimsical reveries, no matter how weightless they seem; his stories are down-to-earth reminders of the precarious nature of adolescent life, a baptism of fire both wondrous and traumatic. Not unlike Truffaut’s own The 400 Blows and Small Change.

A photographer first and foremost, Lamorisse’s first film was a short documentary about the growth of Paris suburbs, 1947’s Banlieue. In 1951 he was asked to make a movie for the Société Française du Cinéma pour la Jeunesse. Written by Lamorisse and Jacques Prévert (who also narrated), Bim The Little Donkey was filmed off the coast of Tunisia on the island of Djerba. It’s the story of a boy named Abdallah and, not surprisingly, his pet donkey, Bim.

Abdallah is not alone in keeping a mule for a companion, it seems every child on this sun-baked island is accompanied by their own long-eared pet. Running free with his friends and their burros would constitute the perfect life for Abdallah were it not for a genuine jackass, a little monster named Messaoud, the son of a caliph who’s already learning the ABC’s of cruelty from his brutal father.

The exotic locale and wide-eyed notions of good and evil give the film the quality of a parable, like a Little Golden Book version of Au Hasard Balthazar. Though the storybook atmosphere doesn’t sugarcoat the real-life drama, the movie maintains a raucous Boy’s Life appeal and blesses the young audience with a happy ending—a cheery finale at cross purposes with Lamorisse’s usually ambiguous approach. His next film would put more faith in the resilience of young ones faced with impossible odds—according to James Agee by way of Lillian Gish, “Children are man at his strongest. They abide.”

Based on a book by René Guillot, 1953’s White Mane shows Lamorisse in full control of his craft. When the film was exported to America, audiences got an extra treat, an English narration co-written by Agee. The Tennessee native could have been describing any one of Lamorisse’s young protagonists when he wrote about his own childhood in Knoxville, “… the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.”

Set in the marshlands of Camargue, France, White Mane is the story of a boy named Folco, played by Alain Emery, and the wild horse he tracks and tames. Living a secluded but serene life with his grandfather and little brother, Folco sustains his family with the bounty from his daily fishing expeditions. He doesn’t have a pet, and doesn’t realize he needed one till he spies a majestic horse in full gallop enjoying both its freedom and the sparring matches with the roughriders who would break him.

The boy and steed are a match made for the wild wetlands, they even share the same hairstyle, a shock of long hair swooping across their brow like a Mediterranean Veronica Lake. Their friendship is tumultuous though, they spend their days eluding the horsemen who view White Mane as an essential trophy. That cat and mouse game spells the end for Folco and his horse when they’re cornered at the seashore—their only retreat is the ocean. As the waters close over them, it’s unclear if they will survive, leaving it up to the audience to imagine Folco’s final chapter or his continuing adventures.

Released in France in the fall of 1956, The Red Balloon is the centerpiece of any retrospective of Lamorisse’s work and rightly so; it was an art house movie that seduced the American heartland in a most unconventional way; it was beamed into living rooms on an Easter Sunday in 1961 as a special presentation of the General Electric Theater, and introduced by Ronald Reagan. For the families gathered around the television, the experience was, as one writer described John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album, “a gentle knockout.”

One gray morning in Belleville, six year old Pascal catches sight of a balloon that’s gotten itself tangled with a street light—when the child frees the toy there is instant recognition; the two are kindred spirits, each are mischievous adventurers and both have time to kill. They have all of Paris to play in and they make the most of it, annoying snooty passersby and cajoling onlookers out of their umbrellas to fend off the spring rain. But the sun comes out and Pascal’s rainy day idyll comes to an abrupt halt; a band of jealous children attack the balloon and then turn their attention to Pascal.

He will escape, just as Folco did, not into the ocean but the sky. Pascal’s destiny is as uncertain as Folco’s, but the sight of him soaring above the clouds is undeniably exhilarating, finally he can look down on the grown-ups. The film is dominated by adults but Pascal’s parents are nowhere to be found (though eagle-eyed viewers can spot three of his actual family members in the film)—their absence might be the reason for Pascal’s solemn demeanor, and why his escape into the unknown holds so much promise—he has been released.

Four years later Pascal Lamorisse got the chance to take a real trip, a Gods-eye tour of the world in Dyaliscope and Eastmancolor.

Stowaway in the Sky is a turn of the century tale about an eccentric professor known only as “grandfather”, and his new invention, a hot air balloon that can be steered by way of an arcane jet propulsion system. His grandson is his unofficial helpmate, a ten year old who manages to hide near the balloon until liftoff. They travel around the world, experiencing far more than the usual seven wonders. Their widescreen escapade may have been a dream realized but Lamorisse needed something special to make it happen: there was no camera on earth that could do what the director had in mind.

In 1960 Lamorisse joined the American Helicopter Society searching for a way to film from a helicopter and still maintain a stable image. He consulted Jean Fieux, a gyro specialist who designed a shock-absorbent camera specifically for that purpose. The device, dubbed Helivision, gave the illusion that, in the words of one critic, “the camera was mounted on a perfectly solid track in the sky.” The movie is a technological marvel with a heart, and required more than a little derring-do on the part of Pascal and André Gille as the professor—they were seated in a loft attached outside the helicopter as it flew over mountaintops, dove in close to cityscapes (the jaunt over the spirals of the Notre Dame cathedral is almost too close for comfort) and zoomed up through the clouds for panoramic views of the alps.

The film must be spectacular in the theater; Le Monde’s Jean de Baroncelli wrote: Le Voyage en ballon is “a tale of a dream realized. Pure cinema. Above all, a ravishing spectacle.” André Maurois: “A film for poets and philosophers.” And Akira Kurosawa placed the film in his top 100 favorites.

There was no such praise for Lamorisse’s last feature-length film, Circus Angel, an earthbound bit of whimsy about a thief who learns to fly. You’ll not only believe a man can fly, but also believe that Lamorisse could make an uninspired movie. Philippe Avron plays a housebreaker who finds sanctuary under the big top, woos a beautiful aerialist (played by Mireille Nègre, the Paris ballet’s principle dancer), defeats the circus strongman, and learns to live without his wings. Losing one’s wings may reveal a bit of introspection for Lamorisse who, after Circus Angel, decided to put away his “childish things” and concentrate on his love for airborne documentaries like 1967’s Versailles and Paris jamais vu.

In 1970, Lamorisse was killed in a helicopter accident while filming The Lovers’ Wind, a documentary about the beauty of Iran. With Albert’s notes, Pascal and Albert’s wife Claude joined forces to complete the film in 1978. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Criterion has collected these five films in a new Blu ray release called The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse. Each film looks ravishing—our only hope is that someday A Stowaway in the Sky will given an IMAX presentation.

The extras on Criterion’s set include a new interview with Pascal, and a 2008 documentary titled My Father Was a Red Balloon featuring Pascal and his daughter Lysa. There are also two short French television interviews with Albert from 1957 and 1959.

In 1960 Jack Lemmon became so enamored with Stowaway in the Sky he bought the rights to the film—his English narration is included with the original French track. In the slipcase is a fine essay by critic David Cairns, Head in the Clouds: The Cinema of Albert Lamorisse.