The red balloon

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Movie
German title The red balloon
Original title Le ballon rouge
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1956
length 34 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Albert Lamorisse
script Albert Lamorisse
production Albert Lamorisse
music Maurice Leroux
camera Edmond Séchan
cut Pierre Gillette
occupation
  • Pascal Lamorisse: Pascal

The Red Balloon is a French short film directed by Albert Lamorisse in 1956 . The multi-award-winning children's film tells the story of a boy who finds a large red balloon, which then does not leave his side. The film almost completely dispenses with dialogues. In 1957, The Red Balloon won an Oscar for best original screenplay.

action

One morning, the little boy Pascal discovers a large red balloon tied to a lamp post on a staircase in the Ménilmontant district of Paris . He unties the balloon and takes it to school. Later on on the way home he tries to protect the balloon from the rain. On arrival at home, his mother forbids him to keep the balloon in his room and banishes the balloon from the window. But strangely enough, the balloon does not float away, but pauses in front of the window and finally allows itself to be caught again by Pascal.

From now on the balloon is a loyal companion and playmate for Pascal, who willingly follows him to school the next morning. When the boy gets on the bus, the balloon follows the boy, when he is in school, the balloon floats in front of the window as if he was waiting for Pascal. Since this causes unrest in the class, Pascal is locked up by the school principal. But when the director is on the way to a meeting, the balloon follows him, which the director is very embarrassed, so that he, exasperated, releases Pascal home. The unusual balloon has also aroused the envy of the other children who ambush Pascal on the way home. Pascal just lets the balloon fly away, knowing that it will return to him.

On Sunday Pascal goes to church with his mother, where the balloon that follows secretly causes a stir. Pascal has to leave the service with the balloon. He walks through the streets and stops at a bakery. There some children manage to catch the balloon. They hooted away with the balloon. Pascal is desperately looking for the balloon. He finally finds him and can free him. In a chase through the narrow streets of the city, Pascal and the red balloon initially manage to escape, but then they are surrounded by the other children. Pascal tries to release the balloon, but the balloon is hit by a slingshot. The air escapes and the balloon sinks to the ground.

Pascal remains sadly with the remains of the balloon. All of a sudden, balloons burst loose all over the city and collect at Pascal's. Overjoyed, the boy ties the balloons together and floats away with them.

reception

When it was first published on October 15, 1956, The Red Balloon was a hit with the public in France, with 1.3 million viewers. The film critic and theoretician André Bazin saw Lamorisse's work as an example of a film which, by concentrating on the mise-en- scene, represents “essential cinema” and, by dispensing with elaborate film cuts, can tell its story more realistically.

In the United States, too , The Red Balloon was a huge hit, as film critic Bosley Crowther described the film as “a completely enchanting little story”. At the end of March 1957, The Red Balloon was awarded an Oscar for best original screenplay; to date, no other short film has received an Oscar outside of the “best short film” category.

Today the red balloon is one of the classics of children's films. When the film was shown again at the end of 2007, the Austrian press still saw the film as “gorgeous” and “universally understandable”. The dialogues were "irrelevant logical (and virtually non-existent), the generality of his fable is the lush local color in manner of poetic realism poised - and reveals the eventual duality a deep understanding of the utopias and the irrevocability of childhood." Even the lexicon of international film sees the “poetic” short film as a “jewel of children's films that has lost none of its magic to this day”.

The red balloon served as the template for the 2007 film Le Voyage du ballon rouge by Hou Hsiao-Hsien .

The musicians Tua and Vasee released a video based on the film in 2011. The song comes from the album Evigila , which was released in December 2010.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IMDb: start dates , accessed on January 29, 2008.
  2. ↑ Cinefeed.com: “Le Ballon Rouge”, empreint de nostalgie , accessed on January 29, 2008.
  3. ^ André Bazin : Montage interdit . In: Les Cahiers du cinéma . No. 65, December 1956, pp. 32-41.
  4. ^ The New York Times : The Red Balloon, March 12, 1957.
  5. ↑ Die Presse : "The Red Balloon": A ball-round thing from December 9, 2007.
  6. ↑ The red balloon. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ↑ In French with German vocabulary, Fig.