The best chil­dren’s sto­ries can be a delight for adults, too. That’s cer­tain­ly the case with Albert Lam­or­is­se’s 1956 short film, The Red Bal­loon. The sto­ry is set in the run-down Ménil­montant neigh­bor­hood of Paris. A lit­tle boy, played by the direc­tor’s son Pas­cal, is walk­ing to school one morn­ing when he dis­cov­ers a red bal­loon tan­gled around a lamp post. He “res­cues” it and takes it to school with him. Along the way, the boy dis­cov­ers that the bal­loon has a mind of its own. It fol­lows him like a stray dog, and togeth­er they face the ter­rors, and tedi­um, of child­hood.

The film, shown above in its entire­ty, earned Lam­or­isse an Acad­e­my Award for Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play and a Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, along with near-uni­ver­sal praise from crit­ics. “The Red Bal­loon is a won­der­ful movie for chil­dren,” says New York Times film crit­ic A.O. Scott in the “Crit­ics’ Picks” video below. “It’s also a unique­ly insight­ful movie about child­hood.” In a 2008 essay, “The Red Bal­loon: Writ­ten on the Wind,” the chil­dren’s author Bri­an Selznick writes of his life-long appre­ci­a­tion for the film:

As a child, I longed for two spe­cif­ic things that I now real­ize Lam­or­is­se’s movie embod­ies: the pres­ence of a lov­ing friend and the knowl­edge that real mag­ic exists in the world. Child­hood, in so many ways, is about learn­ing to nav­i­gate the world around us, to make sense of what seems over­whelm­ing and gigan­tic. Hav­ing a spe­cial com­pan­ion makes that expe­ri­ence more man­age­able and less ter­ri­fy­ing. To kids, the world of grown-ups is often alien and untrans­lat­able, and so mag­ic becomes a lens through which the incom­pre­hen­si­ble uni­verse (as Ein­stein once called it) becomes com­pre­hen­si­ble.

Many Amer­i­cans remem­ber see­ing The Red Bal­loon for the first time as a 16mm film pro­ject­ed in ele­men­tary school class­rooms and cafe­te­rias. With the 2008 release of the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion DVD, many are redis­cov­er­ing the movie–and per­haps over-ana­lyz­ing it–from the per­spec­tive of adult­hood. “An adult watch­ing The Red Bal­loon will not find it dif­fi­cult to see the title char­ac­ter as a sym­bol of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, friend­ship, love, tran­scen­dence, the tri­umph of good over evil, or any of the count­less oth­er things that a sim­ple, round red bal­loon can rep­re­sent,” writes Selznick. “But per­haps we’re bet­ter off enjoy­ing some things the way a child under­stands them: not as metaphors but as sto­ries. In the end, I think there’s some­thing nice about allow­ing the bal­loon to just be. I guess that’s what you do with good friends–you let them be them­selves.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOPJxBjHkgc

If only more liquor com­pa­nies thought as cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly as Jame­son, we’d nev­er run out of stunt-ish yet care­ful­ly craft­ed short films to watch on the inter­net. They’ve put on some­thing called the First Shot con­test, which teams up-and-com­ing film­mak­ers from around the world with no less a lumi­nary of stage and screen than Kevin Spacey. Above, you’ll find The Ven­tril­o­quist, fruit of the labors of Amer­i­can writer-direc­tor Ben­jamin Leav­itt. Spacey stars as the tit­u­lar street per­former, work­ing every day the same emp­ty L.A. street cor­ner, long­ing for the same cof­fee-cart girl, and falling into an ever more com­bat­ive rela­tion­ship with Mr. Hig­gins, his polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect, Char­lie McCarthy-era throw­back of a dum­my. Open Cul­ture read­ers will, of course, already know that Spacey has what it takes for the role, hav­ing seen his nine impres­sions in six min­utes.

Spir­it of a Den­ture, writ­ten and direct­ed by South African win­ner Alan Shel­ley, casts Spacey as a den­tist and frigate enthu­si­ast who one night finds him­self alone in his office with an actu­al sea pirate. Enve­lope, below, by Russ­ian writer-direc­tor Alek­sey Nuzh­ny, dress­es Spacey in a bland­ly gar­ish out­fit of Sovi­et casu­al wear. The year is 1985. The place sits some­where behind the Iron Cur­tain. The char­ac­ter is a col­lec­tor of inter­na­tion­al postal can­cel­la­tion stamps, with only the return of a delib­er­ate­ly mis­mailed let­ter to New Zealand stand­ing in the way of his grand pro­jec­t’s com­ple­tion. Leav­itt, Shel­ley, and Nuzh­ny know how to draw on Spacey’s pecu­liar strengths as an actor: his askew-every­man mys­tique, his dis­tinc­tive­ly fine com­mand of seem­ing­ly bland fea­tures, his seam­less assump­tion of voic­es and man­ner­isms that few oth­er play­ers could take on with dig­ni­ty. Even cer­tain A‑list film­mak­ers, as movie­go­ers know all to well, can’t quite man­age that.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.