Pascal Lamorisse makes friends with an extraordinary red balloon in his father’s classic film
THE RED BALLOON (LE BALLON ROUGE) (Albert Lamorisse, 1956) and WHITE MANE (CRIN BLANC: LE CHEVAL SAUVAGE) (Albert Lamorisse, 1953)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, November 30, 11:00 am
212-727-8110
www.bam.org
Two classic short works by Albert Lamorisse were recently lovingly restored by Janus Films and will be shown together in 35mm prints this weekend at BAM. In The Red Balloon, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, a young boy (Pascal Lamorisse, the director’s son) makes friends with an extraordinary red balloon, which follows him through the streets of Belleville in Paris, waits for him while he is in school, and obeys his every command. But the neighborhood kids are afraid of this stranger and go on a mission to burst the young boy’s bubble. Lamorisse gives life and emotion to the balloon (more than twenty-five thousand were used in the making of the film) in a masterful use of simple special effects well before CGI and other modern technology. The Red Balloon is being screened with another of Lamorisse’s classics, the lesser-known White Mane, in which a magnificent white stallion “who felt trapped in the world of men,” the “proud and fearsome” leader of a herd of wild horses, struggles to maintain his freedom from cowboys in Camargue in the south of France, helped by a young fisherman named Folco (Alain Emery). As in The Red Balloon, Lamorisse imbues the title character with, dare we say it, a unique humanity, as both the balloon and the horse fight for their individuality with only a single young boy at their side. The tender tale includes a new English translation spoken by Peter Strauss. Both films feature the splendid music of Maurice Leroux and the fine photography of Edmond Séchan. The two films are screening November 30 at 11:00 am as part of the twice-monthly BAMcinématek series “BAMkids Movie Matinees,” which continues December 7 with Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and December 21 with Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story.