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

“So, I'm always looking for things to watch with my child, who is six, that aren't annoying, basically. And so I literally Googled like 'Criterion kids' in hopefulness, and someone recommended this, The Red Balloon. It's short, which is unfortunate, I wish it was longer, but he loved it. And so it was a moment of peace and respite from the direction that children's entertainment has gone, which is just greatly underestimating children, in my opinion. So thank you Criterion for I think about 30 minutes of peace.”

“Oh, The Red Balloon, that’s… Oh, wait. Okay, what other stories? Because I’ve seen White Mane. I’ve not seen these other ones. This is an incredible, beautiful movie. It’s one of those movies as a kid that you kind of watch and you don’t even really remember if you saw it or if it was part of your own memory. And the same with White Mane. He’s just… They’re really special, so this is… I can’t wait to watch this with my kids.”

“The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse. I mean, this is just such a simple premise, and it just shows you the magic of film, really, how it can take something like a red balloon, like this little boy’s relationship to a red balloon, and for an inanimate object to become something that you really care about. I’ve had my daughters get emotional about a paper bag that was in the shape of a… a doll, get thrown away. They… It’s that gorgeous childhood thing of… like, putting a personality onto it. And I… I mean, spoiler alert, but, when they burst the balloon, I cried.”

“So I started watching movies, I think, in the late ’50s, where you could go down to the library on main street in Greenwich, and that’s the first time I saw a movie called White Mane. And it’s actually in the Criterion Collection, along with The Red Balloon. A little boy on a white stallion being chased and they end up… I don’t know if I should tell you the ending. It’s in France, in the Camargue, and they end up going into the ocean and just swimming away.”