Albert Lamorisse's Classic Shorts-White Mane/The Red Balloon (1956)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-My Father Was A Balloon - A film about Albert Lamorisse Featurette-Portrait Of Alain Emery Teaser Trailer-Director's Suite Trailers
Rating
Year Of Production	1956
Running Time	72:41 (Case: 74)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Albert Lamorisse
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Pascal Lamorisse Alain Emery Laurent Roche Clan-Clan Francois Perie Denys Colomb Daunant Charles Guillaume Alain Colomb Daunant Sabine Lamorisse Georges Sellier Vladimir Popov René Marion Paul Perey
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$19.95	Music	Maurice Le Roux

    Although the late French director, Albert Lamorisse is best known for his short films, he also made a couple of feature films and documentaries before his untimely death in June 1970. This DVD edition showcases two of Lamorisse's best and most-loved short films on the one disc.

    Albert Lamorisse made three short fiction films in his career, starting with the 1950 film, Bim (Bim, le petit âne). However, it was his next two films that would become the most awarded and respected of his career - White Mane (Crin-Blanc) 1953 and The Red Balloon (Le Ballon rouge) in 1956. Both films are mesmerising childhood fantasies, which have captured the imagination of children and adults alike for over fifty years. Although White Mane has some narration, each story unfolds with minimal use of dialogue. In fact, I believe it would be possible to follow each story quite easily without hearing (or reading) any of the dialogue.

    White Mane (38:19) tells the story of a wild white horse called White Mane and the boy who wished to tame him. A band of ranchers chase the wild horse through bush and swamp land, but the horse continues to outsmart them each time they get close to him. Young Folco (Alain Emery) spends his time catching fish to support his family. He witnesses the ranchers failed attempts and tries to tame White Mane himself. The horse quickly accepts  Folco's genuine and caring nature. Soon the boy and horse are the best of friends. The ranchers are astonished and humiliated by their bond. They again take up the chase, unaware of a looming tragedy. White Mane won many film awards including the Grand Prize at Cannes in 1953 for Best Short Film.

    The Red Balloon (34:22) is without doubt Lamorisse's most famous work and is a true classic of French cinema. It is a multi award winning film, with prizes including the Academy Award for Best Writing, Best Original Screenplay in 1957 and the 1956 Palme d'Or at Cannes for Best Short Film. In Paris, young Pascal (Pascal Lamorisse - yes, it's Albert's son) finds a bright red balloon tied to a post. He unties the balloon and takes it with him. He soon realises that this balloon has a mind of its own. Even without Pascal holding the string, this balloon follows him everywhere. Pascal and the bright red balloon become inseparable, but a group of troublesome kids decide to separate the two and put an end to the balloon. The Red Balloon was very much a Lamorisse family film - Albert's young daughter, Sabine also has a small role, playing the girl with the blue balloon.

    As mentioned earlier, Albert's career was tragically cut short on 2nd June 1970. While in Iran producing his documentary, The Lovers' Wind (Le Vent des amoureux), Albert Lamorisse was killed in a helicopter accident. His widow and son later completed the documentary, releasing the film some eight years after his death. Lamorisse's tragic death at the relatively young age of forty-eight was a great loss to French cinema. Obviously we'll never know what lay ahead in his cinematic career, but we can be grateful for what we do have. And these two short films are two of his best works - enjoy.

    A trivial footnote: Albert Lamorisse took a break from filmmaking after completing The Red Balloon. During this hiatus, he invented the strategy board game, Risk in 1957.

Video

    White Mane and The Red Balloon are both presented in the correct aspect ratios of 1.33:1.They are not 16x9 enhanced.

    Both films have been transferred from a fully restored high definition source, so the degree of sharpness and clarity is quite striking. Blacks were deep and clean, with no noise issues. Shadows exhibited an excellent level of detail.

    White Mane was filmed in glorious black & white. There is an even range of greyscale tones and they are nicely balanced on the disc. However, the real stand-out on the disc is The Red Balloon. The rich display of Technicolor leaps off the screen and looks stunning. The subtle colour of Paris streets contrasts perfectly with sudden bursts of vibrant colour - it really is a delight to watch.

    There were no MPEG artefacts evident in the transfer. Film-to-video artefacts were not a significant issue and film artefacts were negligible. There was some very minor film grain noticed occasionally (probably inherant in the source material) and the vibrant red of the balloon appeared to bleed ever so slightly on a couple of occasions - but I must say, this is being really pedantic.

    White Mane features white English subtitles, with a fine black outline. These titles are perfect for a black and white film and are very easy to read. The Red Balloon features bold yellow English subtitles, which are also well defined and easy to read. The subtitles on each film are burned in and cannot be removed from screen.

    This is a DVD 9, dual layer disc, but I could not locate the layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

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Audio

    The dialogue quality sounded clear throughout and there were no obvious issues with audio sync.

    The original music for both films is credited to Maurice Le Roux. As there is very little dialogue in both films, these scores play an important role in conveying the story and underpinning the emotion.

    There was no surround or subwoofer activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

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Menu

    The main menu has subtle animation, 16x9 enhancement and features a sample of The Red Balloon score.

Featurette - My Father Was A Balloon (52:02)

    This short film was made in 2008 and is a tribute to Albert Lamorisse from his son and granddaughter. Pascal Lamorisse and his daughter, Lysa retrace some of the locations used in The Red Balloon - the film that also made Pascal well-known in France (only as the young boy in the film though). Pascal recounts to Lysa his close relationship with his father and memories of working with him. From a young age through to the last day of his father's life, Pascal adored his father and it shows in this film. Many family home movies and footage from some of Lamorisse's films have been included in this fascinating piece. A couple of years ago, director, Hsiao-hsien Hou paid homage to The Red Balloon with a variation of the story in his film, Flight Of The Red Balloon (Le voyage du ballon rouge). Pascal and Lysa attend the premiere and also speak with the director and a couple of the cast members.

Featurette - Portrait Of Alain Emery (43:09)

    Out of 200-300 applicants, Alain Emery was the ten-year-old first time actor who was selected to play the role of Folco in White Mane. In this 2008 film, filmmaker, Arnaud Dommere follows the now middle-aged Alain and simply observes his life. Alain also talks about his experiences working on the film and with the people behind it.

Director's Suite Trailers

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall