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Rating:  - A Great Film
The Red Balloon is a simple film telling a simple tale but it's greater meaning becomes apparent towards the end of the film. The story of a boy's friendship with a red balloon he finds in a Paris street is a real classic. The newly restored Criterion version looks great, with all colours (esp. the red balloon) intact. It's also interesting to see colour footage of Paris in the the mid 1950's. I bought the dvd for our son after he saw the film version recently on a trip to the local cinema and it's become the firm favourite in our house. Highly recommended.
Rating: - Beautiful Parisian Catharsis
Simple and international , this delightful film has a message of loyalty , and a cathartic ending clearly comprehensible to anyone over the age of three. Remembered indelibly from my own childhood single cinema viewing in the sixties, this fascinating look at a child's adventure with a balloon, set in a charming post- war Paris, can be described accurately as "magical".
Caveat : this DVD is set to Region 1 (USA?) and can therefore cause limits to viewing in other areas such as Europe.
Rating:  - Red Balloon Burst
This is one of the finest short films ever made. Unfortunately, Janus Films opted to use a copy of the film with a defective sound track to make this DVD. I do not understand the mechanics of a film's sound track, but it seems to me that they could have found a better copy to use. Has the copyright run out on this film? Surely the original producers would have been wise enough to avoid this catastrophe. The music is an integral part of the film; it is what ties the various themes together. Shame. Shame.
Joel Emery
Rating: - Red Balloon, a timeless classic
A timeless movie, enjoyed by me as a child and now by my grandchildren. In this world of techno and movie wizardry...young children have a sense to see beyond all that and can still appreciate a good simple, uncomplicated movie.
Rating: - C'est tres manifique!
When I was a wee little shaver growing up in the 1970's, I remember seeing this movie in school. It would've been, oh, about 1978 or 1979. Around the time I was in the 2nd grade. I don't remember a lot from that time of my life (it was, after all, a very long time ago). But I remember this movie! Heck, I even remember owning, of all things, a book that had stills from the movie with captions explaining what was going on. So, yeah, it was an important film for me when I was growing up.
"The Red Balloon", for those who don't know, is the simple story of a very young boy who finds a balloon tied to a lamppost. He unties it and it wanders around with him, apparently at least as smart as a dog. Things go well for our young hero until a group of bullies decide the want the balloon for themselves.
It's amazing to look at this film now and realize how much it colored my impressions of France in general, and Paris in particular. To this day, when I think of Paris, I still tend to think of it in the vaguely grey, post-war scences shown in this movie. Rationally, I know Paris today is nothing like what we see here, but I think until I finally visit the place, this movie will loom large as my primary image of what the city is.
As an adult, I appreciate a lot I didn't see about the movie when I was a kid. The color scheme is mostly various shades of grey, except for the balloon; a bright red splash of color in a drab landscape. Later in the movie we see dozens of other balloons in a rainbow of color, flying out over the grey city. It's a very striking image, and the picture looks spectacular. Obviously a lot of time and effort was spent restoring the film stock. It looks like it could've rolled out to theatres yesterday.
I was also surprised at how touched by the story I was, even now. Amazed to find myself actually in tears at the end of it, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've cried at a movie (for the curious, the only two others I can think of off the top of my head are A.I. - Artificial Intelligence (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition) and Titanic (Three-Disc Special Collector's Edition), though in the case of "AI", the tears stopped rolling during the "WTF?" bit with the future robots. That movie should've ended with the boybot under the water, endless pleading with the Blue Fairy). I don't know what it was about this movie that set me off, but it did.
Some words here about the extras on this DVD. Those words are, "What extras?" You get a trailer for this and White Mane (Released by Janus Films, in association with the Criterion Collection), and that's it. Now, given that it's a very short film, I wasn't expecting much. But would it have been too terribly difficult for them to throw in, say, interviews with people involved, visits to the sites today, and maybe a retrospective from some modern filmmakers who might cite this movie as inspiration? Frankly, I expected better from a DVD that has the word "Criterion" on it. Yes, I know it was released by Janus films, but if Critierion is going to have their name on it, it should at least come close to being up to their usual standards.
That said, this movie is a great value for the price. I have no regrets in buying it, and I'm very pleased it's being preserved for future generations, and people like me, to enjoy.
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