I recently saw a new 35mm print of Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon (Le Ballon rouge, 1956), and followed that with a screening of Flight of the Red Balloon (Le Voyage du ballon rouge, 2007), by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien. The former short film (it’s 34-minutes-long) was an obligatory viewing experience for children growing up in the sixties and seventies, making it, according to Michael Koresky (who wrote the essay in the DVD booklet) “the largest-selling non-theatrical print in American history.” By contrast, the latter feature (113-minutes-long) had a limited release beyond the festival circuit and has only been seen by a few arthouse faithful.

It’s probably fair to say that The Red Balloon traumatized quite a few kids, despite its (spoilers ahead) literally uplifting message.  In fact, the projectionist for the matinee show came out of the booth looking like he’d just seen a ghost and immediately started complaining about how this film had scarred him for life, and even now, many years later, it still terrifies him because “it’s all about being chased by mean kids, death, and then being kidnapped by a bunch of balloons that are probably going to pop above the rooftops of Paris.”

I have to admit that for me, as a kid, the slow, sweaty, deflating death of the red balloon was absolutely gut-wrenching, and this despite the ending that was meant to reassure kids that magic still exists. The stark horror and abject loneliness I felt from that film came back to haunt me with the death of my first cat. Lamorisse’s film (which stars his own son) was clearly meant to have an instructional value to children on the passing of a pet, and upon revisiting the film anew I noticed that it starts with a shot of the boy (Pascal Lamorisse) petting a passing cat just before descending into the Parisian streets. Others have also remarked about how the film was Lamorisse’s way of trying to reclaim some of the innocence he felt France lost when the country collaborated with the Nazi’s in WWII, and one can easily see how the bullies in The Red Ballon could represent Nazi aggression.

Upon revisiting the film in a gorgeous new 35mm print, the most eye-opening revelation for me came from the deepness of the colors – especially as my memory of the 16mm print I’d seen as a child was of something scratched and faded. In the new print by Janus Films, the red of the balloon was so rich and shiny as to almost seem like a 3-D effect against the uniformaly blueish-gray backdrops of Paris. The compositions were simple but elegant and, overall, this almost-dialogue-free film felt even more accomplished to me now, as an adult. Judging by the sniffles it got from the kids in the audience, its impact hasn’t weakened one iota.

Flight of the Red Balloon, on the other hand, had no children in the audience – as is to be expected. Hou Hsiao-hsien is notable for eschewing traditional narratives altogether in favor of a meditative slice-of-life approach that is more interested in how people and objects reveal aspects of themselves and their culture by how they move through space and time. He doesn’t use contrived plot points or typical story mechanics to progress from beginning to end, so a lot of western audiences might find themselves struggling with the pacing.

Still, Flight of the Red Balloon is being billed as his most accessible film to date, and that is probably true thanks to both Juliette Binoche and the occasional presence of a travelling red balloon (even if only in cameo moments). And, yes, there’s a boy (Simon), but in this version the ally against loneliness is a Chinese film student (Song Fang). I let myself fall under the film’s spell and it registered on my senses like a visual piece of classical music composed of minimilastic and languid notes bracketed by a stellar intro and end. J. Hoberman writes:

As though shooting a silent, Hou wrote a script without dialogue—then discussed each scene with his actors, who had to invent their own lines. This surely accounts for Simon’s diffidence as well as Binoche’s splendiferous eccentricity. Where actual film student Song Fang essentially plays herself, Binoche was compelled to invent the theatrical character Suzanne. The movie is animated not only by the hide-and-seek antics of the red balloon but by her extravagant turn as a frazzled performance artist. Played with total self-absorption and a corresponding absence of vanity, Suzanne is a harried composition in frowsy blonditude, filmy scarves, and mad décolletage—the most dynamic female protagonist in the Hou oeuvre. (Village Voice, April 1st, 08)

Of course, not all “homages” to The Red Balloon are as reverential as the one by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Gregg Rossen’s Revenge of the Red Balloon (2000) has the following plot outline on IMDB: “The Balloon is back… And he’s pissed!!! The Red Balloon returns to hunt down the bad little boys (now middle-aged Frenchmen) who popped it in the original classic film 40 years ago.”

Along similar lines and with sheer misanthropic zest, for those who can handle morbid humor, it’s hard to beat Don Hertzfeldt’s Billy’s Balloon (1998) – Hertzfeldt clearly relates to the trauma of the matinee projectionist: