Word: balloon
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...gold rush that sent prices spiraling to a six-year high on the London market reflected foreign worry about the soundness of the U.S. dollar. It was a short-term rush; last week gold prices plummeted close to the U.S. price of $35 per oz. The gold balloon was deflated by the U.S. Treasury's firm announcement that it 1) has no intention of devaluing the dollar, and 2) is prepared to sell all the gold needed to stabilize the price on the London market...
Frenchmen looked up in wonder last year as a big orange balloon carrying two passengers floated back and forth across the country. Photographed by movie cameras in an accompanying helicopter, the balloon whisked by the spires of the Strasbourg Cathedral, almost bumped into the Eiffel Tower, skimmed within a few yards of Mont Blanc, dipped down to mast level over the Riviera. In Paris last week the resulting film, Voyage in a Balloon, gave audiences a stunning cloud's-eye view of virtually every remarkable tourist sight in France...
Voyage is the work of Albert Lamorisse, already known for his prizewinning shorts (Bim, White Mane, The Red Balloon) and probably the most original moviemaker in France. Echoing the consensus, Le Monde's Jean de Baroncelli, dean of Paris film critics, wrote: Voyage is "a tale of a dream realized. Pure cinema. Above all, a ravishing spectacle." Wrote Author André Maurois: "A film for poets and philosophers...
...Accidents. The two-year production repeatedly ran into trouble. Lamorisse had to spend $180,000 for equipment to keep the camera-bearing helicopter from vibrating, had to get government permits every time his balloon went up or came down. More drastically, the shooting often endangered the lives of his stars, one of them his ten-year-old son Pascal (who at six played the boy in The Red Balloon). No trick photography was used. Once, the balloon exploded, and the occupants, including Pascal, narrowly escaped death as the basket plunged to the ground. Lamorisse reworked the script to make...
...avoid a mere travelogue, Lamorisse built his story around a Quixotic professor out to demonstrate that a balloon is the ideal means of transportation. At the last moment, his grandson talks his way aboard. The eventful flight-they follow flocks of exotic birds, drop in on a bullfight-is followed by a supply car on the ground carrying the professor's comic assistant, a Chaplinesque caricature of gadget-addicted modern man, whose wine bottle is hinged within reach and who uses an automatic feeder so that he doesn't have to stop driving. One of Voyage...