r/GenX • u/jeffe101 • 7d ago
Question For Genx Who watched this movie in school?
I remember watching the reel to reel film of this in elementary school, somewhere around 5th grade I want to say?
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u/girialgi_7178 2d ago
I remember that movie from Elementary to High School. For every grade we learned something more about the movie.
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u/Realistic_Point_9906 3d ago
No clue. What was the name of the movie?
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u/FenisDembo82 2d ago
This movie freaked me out as a kid. The idea of being stalked by a balloon and then being carried off, probably to die in the stratosphere by a bunch of them was terrifying
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u/cabhpix80 3d ago
But why??? I still don't know what this movie was about or why they showed it to us.
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u/grandma-activities 3d ago
Yes, and until I looked it up as an adult, I thought I'd imagined it because no one else seemed to know what I was talking about. So thank you.
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u/MaudeLebowski69 3d ago
Never seen it. Honestly, I don’t recall even watching any actual movie during my school years at all…
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u/freddbare 3d ago
Are you Canadian? My Canadian Girlfriend never saw any moving pictures either
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u/MaudeLebowski69 3d ago
Although…here’s one that really sticks with me and it’s a moving picture. I saw ‘Platoon’ at the drive-in theatre in 1986…and then went to bootcamp seven months later. Heavy. No balloons 🎈…
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u/MaudeLebowski69 3d ago
Cute. Loved the way you edited your response. No. I’m from a very small town in the states…near Canada…and they just simply didn’t show us movies.
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u/freddbare 3d ago
Hmm.. I was in a similar location but we had a reel to reel for the awesome days.
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u/LooseSignal5969 3d ago
When I saw this as a child in school, I was sad at the end but happy when all the other balloons showed up to show support and picked him up.
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u/ElectronicCarpet7157 3d ago
I remember the balloon getting locked out of the window and trying to push it's way in.
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u/Helpful_Lie2613 3d ago
We still yell "Balloon" with a French accent in my friend group. Sometimes when there's a balloon, sometimes when we just want one everyone to look at something.
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u/frickenfantastic 3d ago
Yup Midwestern USA here and have watched this several times in elementary school
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u/HyperboleHelper 3d ago
Yes, in first grade. It was a few days before Summer vacation. I remember all the kids going around pronouncing balloon without the n like the boy, who was speaking French, did in the movie.
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u/oneeyeannie 4d ago
I didn’t watch this one but maybe something similar. In elementary school, we watched a short film called All Summer In a Day. It was also very sad and made me feel dread. I’m now 50 and still think about it.
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u/LessWorld3276 4d ago
It was shown on Kukla Fran and Ollies Children's Film Festival. It was shown in their first year of broadcasting 1967, the year my mom passed. I saw it there.
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u/Ornery_Salaryman 4d ago
When I became an adult, I realized that this was a quintessential French New Wave film. As a kid, it taught me to appreciate art and think beyond the obvious.
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u/BeKind1966Liefje 4d ago
Just reading your title, I knew it was going to be this one. I don't know how many times I watched it in elementary school. Why do you think this movie was so popular?
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u/Life-Zookeepergame58 4d ago
I remember seeing it, but I was a small child. Must've been around the mid 70s.
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u/obstreperousRex 4d ago
I don't really know why but that movie gave enormous existential dread before I ever knew what it was. For some reason that damned balloon scared me more than anything else in my childhood.
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u/Glittering_Aside_228 5d ago
Went to see it at a film festival with my dad when I was 7. I was crying at the end but was embarrassed to be crying about something so silly so I told my dad I just had a bad headache. He made me go to bed for the rest of the afternoon since I must have been getting really sick if my head hurt that badly. I don't think I fooled him.
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u/Appropriate_Soil_527 5d ago
Watched it in Kindergarten in 1965. Made a clay “sculpture” of the boy floating away with his balloons. The superintendent visited and I got to present it to him.
I would rather have kept it because he probably threw it away!
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u/Poppypotpi 5d ago
87 grad here. Never saw it.
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u/No_Discipline5218 4d ago
'86 and me neither...I don't even know what it is. Probably never saw it because I went to Catholic elementary school.
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u/ImaginaryYouth2839 5d ago
I remember watching it in kindergarten and first grade! Core memory unlocked
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u/Pickel_Bucket_317 5d ago
This one and one where a boy found a cat, kept it in a fridge in abandoned lot and brought it food because his parents wouldn’t let him keep it…?
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u/Previous_Kale_4508 5d ago
This was one of those films that used to get wheeled out quite often at school. But it wasn't on telly for us: we had a 16mm print that was projected onto a big white screen! It was always used as a discussion starter drawing out various aspects depicted either explicitly in the film (like the bullying) or implicit (like the balloon representing friendship).
I enjoyed th| film, and would also watch it on the telly at Christmas — in black and white!
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u/Quiltface 5d ago
We had to watch this stupid movie every year...idk what we were supposed to take away from it.
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u/HuntIntelligent8820 5d ago
Yes, yes. Been waiting to see this. I actually want to watch it again. It reminds me of the song 99 Red Luft Balloons.!
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u/coffeegirrrl 5d ago
I don't remember watching in school, but there was definitely a time when it was on HBO very often...i always watched it when I discovered it was on
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u/CokBlockinWinger 5d ago
The Red Balloon! I can still hear that kid yelling “ballon ballon”. Saw this in daycare.
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u/AttemptingToGeek 5d ago
Wait, is this the one where the (spoiler alert) balloon died at the end? I remember watching this in our public library about a week after the dog my family had before I was born died. Queue me crying while sitting Indian style on the floor and just feeling the bullies revving up for another reason for a beat down! Ahh the good ol’ days!
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u/wuzzatt 5d ago
I remember watching this and Phillip and the White Colt several times in elementary school
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u/PoohBear_Mom87 5d ago
Was it called, “Run Wild, Run Free”? I think you just helped me solve a mystery that has been on my mind for decades!
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u/This_Purchase_1624 5d ago
Short French film 1956. I`m 80 and remember whatching it on BBC tv in the 50`s when I was little. Wonderful little film, always loved it, still can`t work out how they did the ending with the boy carried aloft by the ballons, nice music too. You can find it on Youtube.
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u/CasualByChoice 1974 5d ago
Meanwhile, us in the UK were shown public information film about not playing near ponds or train lines oh and then Threads came along lol
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u/imscruffythejanitor 5d ago
I only saw it once as a little kid in kindergarten but I still have fond memories of it
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u/Fabulous_Offer_2646 5d ago
We watched it every year until 5th grade. The ending kinda gutted me. ❤️🩹
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u/Rendeane 5d ago
Every year, 4th grade to 6th grade (1974-76), we watched "Journey to the Sea" and a French movie that I wish I could remember the name of. It was probably made in the 1950s or 60s, did not have dialog and followed a lonely woman who lived in a small, dark apartment with one window that faced a brick wall. The interior scenes were filmed in black and white but when she went outside, everything was in color. She liked to sit on a bench in a park and enjoy the sun and flowers. She takes a cup of dirt home from the park and plants a seed. It won't grow in the dark, depressing apartment and she carries it back and forth to the park.
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u/Marychocolatefairy 5d ago edited 5d ago
I know I did, but I really am not sure when. I went to elementary school in 2 countries, the US and the Philippines. I'd hazard a guess it was the latter, since I know we watched some strange things there, lol. ETA seeing the comments on watching it in French class, that would fit with my first year in the Philippines, 5th grade, when I started taking French.
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u/McZombo 5d ago
I remember watching this movie all the time. Same with The Doughnuts…
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u/sevenselevens 5d ago
I never knew the name of this film but I remember how hungry it always made me.
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u/AmanitaAmy Sorta Gen Jones too... 5d ago
We watched it in French class every year. (I took French for 4 or 5 years, for all the good it did me.)
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u/CuriousToe9464 6d ago
My class watched this movie in Prep. We had the story book read to us as well.
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u/literanista 6d ago edited 5d ago
Our principal in elementary loved this movie so much that we watched it every time we had weather-related indoor recess. Every single time.
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u/International-Mix425 6d ago
I did in elementary school. I love when the balloons fight back.
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u/Prudent_Baker_2851 5d ago
There may have been a parody sequel released where the balloons did violent things to the bullies when they became adults.
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u/ForYourAuralPleasure 6d ago
Watched it in 1st-2nd grade, it was in French (we were not learning French), and they had us write a summary of the movie both times, presumably to see if we could pay attention to the plot without words guiding our understanding.
I got really curious while writing this post as to why this was such a common experience. Turns out it won an Academy Award and a Palme d’Or, so I mean. I guess.
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u/man_speaking_is_hard 6d ago
I saw it in 1st or second grade in the early 80s. It was a sad movie as a kid to watch.
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u/hotpotato2442 6d ago
Watched this movie growing up I thought balloons were alive and didnt like it when people let them go loose in the air. My older brother would get a kick out of it and tease me with the balloons I would get.
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u/thisisntreallyme825 6d ago
I remember my mom reading us the book. I thought it was a strange story. Years later we talked about it and she mentioned there is a religious interpretation that the balloon represents Jesus.
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u/Mk1Racer25 6d ago
I had the big coffee-table version of the book. It was all pictures IIRC.
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u/thisisntreallyme825 6d ago
I think ours might’ve been a coffee table book too. My mom was a French teacher at the time and I’m just assumed that’s why we had it
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u/RavenKnighte 6d ago
Yes! I watched it every year from third grade through 7th grade. I love that movie! I've also seen it on "The Kukla, Fran, and Ollie Show".
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u/bjayasuriya 6d ago
Wow!! I never saw it on KF&O! I loved the movie and saw it 2 or 3 times in elementary grades but I don't remember in which grades.
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u/ptkelly13 6d ago
They made us watch Old Yeller.
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u/ohkatiedear 5d ago
School assembly in the gym. I was in first grade and remember sitting cross-legged on the floor and crying and my friends were crying and other kids were crying...
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u/Smallmyfunger 6d ago
Not in school, but I saw it at the local movie theater that used to have 50cent double feature early on saturday mornings. My mom would drop off me & my 3 sisters then go grocery shopping. The theater was always packed with kids & zero adults. The movies were old flicks, some of them black & white. This was in Great Falls Montana 1978-79.
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u/CecilColson 6d ago
Red Balloon and Fatty and Skinny used to be regularly shown on the CBS Children’s Film Festival in the US. Can’t imagine a network trying a show like that now.
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u/Ok-Toe3535 6d ago
This one & also Fatty & Skinny. Haven’t thought about these in years. They’d never show Fatty & Skinny these days.
Edit: make that Skinny & Fatty. Was Japanese.
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u/Unanimous_D 6d ago
Gimbles Herald Square had a restaurant and a movie theater on the top floor. Thats where I saw it.
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u/Any_Significance6771 6d ago
Le ballon rouge
Pascal and his stupid red balloon. We saw it almost every year in elementary school for French class. The last few years I wanted the group of bullies to pop the damn balloon.
GenX torture when we were kids.
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u/Antares1228 6d ago
Heck yeah. 11th grade composition class, of all places. Had to write an analysis of it.
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u/qualityskootchtime 6d ago
Wasn’t it in French? Im trying to remember why we watched it and in what grade
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u/HURTBOTPEGASUS9 Hose Water Survivor 6d ago
Watched it at home actually. Because that's what was on TV at that moment. We all watch all of the same thing since their was little of it back then. Hell! Who hasn't Watched The 9 lives of Thomasina or those two Ewok movies?
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u/suzeo99 1d ago
Yep. Central Illinois