The Red Balloon

This is my first time watching a film that is this old. The first thing that I did notice throughout the film was the lack of dialogue. Every movie that I have ever watched has used dialogue as one of the primary methods to move the plot along. The Red Balloon almost completely ignored dialogue to move along the plot. I think there was only like five or six lines throughout the movie. To help move along the plot we see the director use other means to help with the movement of the plot. These things include: music, moving through different locations, and actor’s body language. First the music helps because there are scenes when not much is happening or something sad has happened and the music is more mellow that other parts of the movie. Continuing with music, when we see the young boy being chased through the alleyways towards the end, we can hear the music have more tempo to it. Secondly, the use of different locations helps the movie. Since there is basically no dialogue, the movie relies on different locations to help with the plot. Lastly, the body language of the actors. We can see this most easily in the last scene of the movie when the little boy loses his balloon you can see how sad he is; then when all of those balloons come to him you can see how happy he is. The one thing I found hard with the movie was it wasn’t in English, but we had English subtitles. I find it hard to concentrate on a movie when I have to read subtitles, but it’s only a minor inconvenience. I think this film is trying to fight Hollywood ideals on how a movie is spouse to look.