Next, I watched THE RED BALLOON. It's only 34 minutes long, but it's a completely charming, whimsical little French trifle. It's obviously packaged by Criterion, but they're not taking credit for it. It's released under the Janus Film label. Gorgeous Technicolor transfer in Academy ratio. Oddly, the trailer is in anamorphic widescreen showing that the film could have been soft matted and anamorphically enhanced for a widescreen DVD release. I'm not sure which I would have preferred. I suspect if it had been anamorphic, there wouldn't have been that slight bit of line twitter when the child would pass by certain wrought iron fences. Most of the line structures on steps, bricks, etc. are solid as can be.
Amazingly, this won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay of 1956 (over such weightier contenders as LA STRADA, THE BOLD AND THE BRAVE, and THE LADYKILLERS).