I missed a day. I'm sorry. It won't happen again. By which I mean it will, but I will feel guilty about it.I got an e-mail today from the Barbican, trailing a film that they are screening, Flight of the Red Balloon. Apparently it is a homage to Albert Lamorisse's classic 1956 short Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon).
Up until the age of eight, I went to the Lycee Francais in South Kensington, and every year on one very exciting day they would herd us all into the French Institute cinema next door and show us Le Ballon Rouge. There was always an enormous kerfuffle about this. We were left in no doubt as to the fact that what was happening was a Very Big Deal. Le Ballon Rouge, as far as the French Lycee was concerned, was perhaps the most important artefact of French - nay, any - cinema ever made. As for the children, there would always be the hope that this year we would not be watching Le Ballon Rouge. The doomed hope, I should say. They are probably still showing it on a yearly basis even now.
I was only at the French Lycee for three years but I still feel as if I have seen Le Ballon Rouge about sixty times. Here's what I remember. The teacher taking us out of class and leading us across the playground. What seemed like several hours of standing around in the foyer of the French Institute cinema - it had an upstairs as well as a downstairs in the auditorium, which was properly exciting. Of course, I always wanted to go upstairs. Finally going in to take our seats. I am downstairs. The film starts. A little boy has a balloon and lets go of it and it floats away and bobs around a city. It is in black and white but the balloon is red. The film ends. We return to class.
Will I be going to see Flight of the Red Balloon? Probably not...
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Ha! Marie, Sixth Form French took me to the French Lycee on a regular basis to watch impenetrable French films which I couldn't understand. Was Le Ballon Rouge one of them? I can't quite remember, but I know I've seen it, so probably...
I do know I bunked off once and went to try and see a squaddie I was half in love with (he wasn't in love with me), which was sadly about as rebellious as my teen years got...
Does Nena's "99 Red Balloons" have as much meaning? It's a tad mental in German, less so in English.
Due to my defective visual recognition/memory skills, I didn't remember that Le Ballon Rouge was in black and white, but I do remember that I found it slightly creepy. Maybe because they used to show a stranger-danger film before it involving potential kidnappers in cars and smart girls who carried around pieces of chalk with which to write down the number plates on the pavement.
Hi Marie,
So another ex from the French Lycee emerges!
So am I (and also Gail Rebuck, now fuhrer at Random House!)
Quel petit monde...
I had forgotten about the always-carry-chalk movie! No wonder we were so well-equipped for hopscotch.
Maxim, bonjour! So when were you at the Lycee? I am guessing Gail Rebuck was not in my year.
bonjour la belle Marie,
I was there too many years ago, as my grey hair bears witness too....
actually just a few years from gail's sojourn.
x x x
D'y know Rob, I don't think I ever listened to the words of 99 Red Balloons apart from that super scurry bit (which is such a German translation I guess it had to be there). I thought I was going a bit mad as the German doesn't always match the English and then I realised the Captain Kirk verse in German is one ahead of it in English, which does seem a tad mental... But then it was the 80s and we all thought the balloon was about to go up, not the Berlin Wall fall down I suppose...
Another ex-Lyceen here, and yes, Le Ballon Rouge was an annual event for me too.
For some strange reason the only other thing I ever remember seeing at the Institut was "Arsenic and Old Lace". In English. Most odd.
Bro.
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