Stowaway in the Sky (1960)

Not rated.  But there's absolutely nothing that can be considered objectionable besides some minor peril.  You also might have "Balloon Boy" flashbacks if you are the right age.

DIRECTOR:  Albert Lamorisse
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Okay, Criterion. That's not fair.  I simply assumed this was a box set of short films.  You can't stick two feature length films as "...and Other Tales".  I don't know if I would have formatted this blog this way.  But you know what?  I'm going to milk all of this for content because it's my blog and who is going to stop me?  (I swear, if Square gets oddly specific about a rule I don't know about, I would be disappointed.)  No, I'm going to post this blog entry both as part of the "The Red Balloon and Other Tales" page and as its own blog.  I feel like I can do that.  I'll also do the same thing with Circus Angel, thus making me feel like I'm really crushing all of this material.

I wasn't ready for how much I loved this movie.  I have this one student, who may be reading this but is probably not, who is all about Hayao Miyazaki.  I love Miyazaki, but this student love-loves Miyazaki.  He's not necessarily one who would give something like Stowaway in the Sky a chance, but I saw him today and overtly recommended it.  Stowaway in the Sky is Miyazaki before Miyazaki.  Maybe that's what I need to take away from all of this Albert Lamorisse stuff.  I simply assumed that Stowaway in the Sky  was going to be marketing on the success of "The Red Balloon."  Maybe, at one point in the development, that could have been true.  After all, the opening titles say "The Voyage of the Red Balloon" in them.  But while "The Red Balloon" may have served as an inspiration or a starting point for this movie, that's really where it ends.

I have the feeling that Lamorisse is not a fan of actual conflict in his stories.  Sure, we could look at "Bim, the Little Donkey" or "White Mane" as stories that are all about conflict.  But the conflict in those stories are so simple and lack any complexity that it becomes more about the tone of the films in themselves.  Stowaway in the Sky even peels it back a little more.  Golly, it sounds like I'm ragging on the movie (despite the fact that this might be one of the best movies I've seen this year), but every time a conflict is introduced in the story, it's resolved in an almost hilariously short amount of time.  The boy doesn't get to go on the balloon?  He goes on the balloon?  They can't land the balloon?  Nope, they can land the balloon.  The girl is stuck in the balloon?  They get her down before the owner of the balloon even wakes up from his nap.  The balloon is supposed to blow up, not once but twice?  No one injured or in range of the explosion.  To top all of that off, they even have a spare balloon.  It's just...peaceful.

Miyazaki goes to certain wells for his material.  Lamorisse and Miyazaki probably share the same wells.  I was going to say that this is the first of his movies that I've seen where he doesn't share a deep love for animals.  But that's not even true.  The most gripping part of the story is when the two in the balloon come upon a stag being hunted.  It's that very European kind of hunting where there are hounds and horses and a bugle.  But Lamorisse comes down hard on the side of the animal.  There's something absolutely gorgeous about this sequence that harkens back to "Red Balloon" and "White Mane."  While the hunters in this film are almost devoid of any attempts at characterization, unlike the counterparts that I just cited, their role in the film is the same.  Intellectually, we can all instantly understand that there is a value to hunting.  But spiritually and emotionally, there's something fundamentally cruel about the entire concept of hunting, especially something that is so meant to instill fear in prey. Back to Miyazaki, it isn't too much of an emotional leap to go from taking care of animals to Miyazaki's affinity for environmentalism.  He hasn't shied away from telling stories abou taking care of creatures.  I know that both Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke have imagery where humans take care of injured animals.  

But the real connective tissue between these two directors is a love for flight.  Honestly, much of my love for this movie is wrapping my head around how these shots worked in this movie. I had to Google it just now.  I just needed to know.  (Short version?  It's actually a helicopter with the facade of a balloon basket for a lot of the shots.  But back to the love of flight that these two directors share.  Lamorisse bets everything on the notion that the beauty of the sky will sell the film in itself.  I have the vibe, based on the minimal Wikipedia page on this movie, that Stowaway might not have been the smash hit that a lot of people probably wanted it to be.  I also am terrified that I'm going to go on Letterboxd later and be the only one giving this movie five-stars.  Anyway, it's all about the visuals.  I've seen movies with grand visuals.  I write about them a lot.  But there's something about the visual language of Stowaway that actually makes the characterization work.  While "Bim, the Little Donkey" emphasized pantomime to convey emotions, Stowaway goes the other direction.  I love the kid and his grandfather, who just stare in awe at the world around them.  There's never moments of fear when the kid (even in real life!) is aware of how high they are. (Note: I do love that there's an attempt to build tension by saying if the balloon rises too high, it will explode.  But in one of the shots of the two eating dinner, they're up higher than they would be during the Alps sequence.) 

We're going to France this summer.  I know that my kids will probably roll their eyes when I recommend watching a movie from 1960.  But this is also a showcase of France.  It's also France in a very specific time in history.  We can kind of take movies like this for granted.  After all, I know that my brother-in-law uses a drone on every vacation to get that arial view.  But Lamorisse is doing this almost in a completely analogue way.  If I had to criticize the movie in an attempt to now fawn all over it so much, maybe he does that arial shot a bit too aggressively.  But it also accurately gives us that subjective lens to view the film from.  Because the two characters are in the balloon the entire time, we connect with these characters more.

And as grandiose as I'm being about the artistry of this movie, I have to give so many points for this movie being genuinely funny.  I know nothing about Maurice Baquet, but that man can do physical comedy.  It's rare to see those kind of gags outside of the Harold Lloyd / Buster Keaton era.  He does some absolutely amazing dangerous jokes that both work narratively within the movie and as jokes in themselves.  Sure, like M. Hulot, there are moments you question why he does things the way that he does things. But if this is a children's movie, which I absolutely believe that it is, no one is really questioning his methodology.  It's the joke that he's giving us and it works every time.  It's honestly one of the more impressive spectacle films that I've seen and those physical stunts are part of it.

This is a joyful movie.  I love this.  I'm probably going to be the only person who loves it, but it is so nice and so gorgeous.  Also, an hour-and-twenty-three minutes?  *chef's kiss*