The Red Balloon
Starring: Pascal Lamorisse, Georges Sellier, Vladimir Popov
Director: Albert Lamorisse
The film: Competition for best original screenplay was strong at the 1957 Academy Awards. Among the nominees were Federico Fellini's La Strada and the classic Ealing comedy, The Ladykillers. But the Oscar went to neither. Instead, it was given to The Red Balloon, a 34-minute French film containing virtually no dialogue and still today the only short film ever to have won an Oscar outside of the short-film category. It also won a Golden Palm at Cannes, and many other international prizes, from London to Tokyo.
It's a simple story, beautifully told: a small boy (director Albert Lamorisse's son, Pascal) finds a red, helium-filled balloon on his way to school and spends the next couple of days trying to keep hold of it against the wishes of his schoolteacher, grandmother and a local gang of boys. One of the things that is so captivating about the film, aside from the almost fairytale-like Paris locations (mostly around Menilmontant), is the way in which the balloon is manipulated. We never see wires or control lines as it moves quite deliberately around the screen in nuanced dips and swerves, or speeds down wet, cobblestone streets through the now-antiquated traffic. Even the Parisian bystanders look bemused.
The Red Balloon is essentially a children's film, but adults will be equally engaged. Fans of French cinema will recognise camera tracking shots and set-ups used a few years later by Francois Truffaut in The 400 Blows, and Paris has seldom looked more appealing as it does through the lens of Edmond Sechan's camera. (And many grown-ups will, as children, have owned The Red Balloon picture book that was illustrated with shots from the film and has been in print in numerous languages for more than half a century).