Did the French movie 'The Red Balloon' inspire part of 'Water Park'?

Richiepiep

Administrator
I still wonder if the final scene of the Water Park-babysitter episode is inspired by this French classic short from 1956 (!), Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon) by Albert Lamorisse, the Frenchman who also happens to be the inventor of the game Risk, originally titled La Conquête du Monde.

Fragment from "Le Ballon Rouge" (1956):

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x58w6v_le-ballon-rouge_shortfilms

(The entire version of this extremely well-crafted and poetic movie (34 mins.) can be seen elsewhere on Dailymotion.com and Google Video)

It's not as far-fetched as it may seem: it won the 1957 Oscar for best screenplay (in the feature category!), and must have inspired whole generations of American schoolchildren (and traumatized some ;)) as thousands of prints were distributed to elementary schools across the country.

And a lot of reviewers have commented that in the movie, the balloons represent people's souls, which is made clearer at the end - and in MITM, it can't be a coincidence that the balloon appears, I reckon, when the babysitter dies (this is why I think she died, rather than just had a heart attack).

The kid (the director's son Pascal) looks a bit like Dewey too ...

Rich
 

Lozart

New member
Yeah, I think it does allude to the movie. A great way to put something like that in the show and make it so funny :)
 

Richiepiep

Administrator
a remake of this film was made last year : http://french.imdb.com/title/tt0826711/combined

Yes, I read about that, Le voyage du ballon rouge by Taiwanese director Hsiao-hsien Hou of all people, but I don't know if it was shown at my local cinema. My friend got to see it though at an international festival. He said it was slow, but rewarding, and said that Juliette Binoche's acting was phenomenally real and touching. It's definitely on my "wish list".

I was surprised to see the original got so widely distributed in the USA.

Rich
 
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