RED BALLON THEORY
Francois Truffaut (sometimes known as the demolisher of French cinema when he worked as a critic), writing in Cahiers du Cinema, was scathing:
I saw Le Ballon Rouge three times in the space of six months, so there’s nothing mysterious to me about the unfailing enthusiasm it arouses. I know that if I criticize it severely I risk offending my most faithful readers and singling myself out in the worst possible way. When a work is universally admired, one hesitates to run counter to popular opinion. One might be tempted to pretend so as not to stand all alone.
There’s no question that Le Ballon Rouge, a love story about a little boy and a balloon which follows him around everywhere like a puppy, is a carefully made film, and admirably photographed, if not well directed; also, the boy mugs as little as possible. Having said that, there is, in my opinion, neither poetry nor fantasy nor sensitivity nor truth in this film—not real poetry, fantasy, sensitivity, or truth.
When Walt Disney bestowed human speech and reactions on animals, he cheated the animals and the human beings as well. He betrayed La Fontaine by caricaturing him—but then no one takes Disney for a poet. I believe firmly that nothing poetic can be born derivatively; we should despise modern artefacts which resemble something else: pens that are really cigarette lighters, leather-bound books that are cigarette boxes, etcetera.
In fact he had no mercy for the sentimentality of Albert Lamorisse’s Le Ballon Rouge – ‘like a film of Minou Drouet made for Marie-Chantal.’
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