Folco

Alain Emery, who acted the boy Folco in the film I was telling you about - I wanted to know what happened to him. He was only 11 years old when he was picked in 1951 this being one year before I was born. The more astute of my readers will have noticed another link - like me, he went about barefoot.

I could not find out much on the internet about Alain. True, he acted in several other films after Crin Blanc but none of any consequence. He was born on August 5, 1940 in Marseille, which makes him 75 now. I found a 2012 interview in French and here are some excerpts from Google's rough translation.

Alain, age 12, as Folco in the film Crin Blanc

Alain in the interview, 60 years later

His eyes held green pond reflections. And his face held the dark pout that was the charm of Folco, companion of the legendary White Main.

"No I was not made to be an actor. But Crin Blanc has changed my life"... He discovers the world of cowboys, horses, learns to ride, and becomes a larger than life Folco, blond and shy, a little wild, and clinging to White Mane. "In fact, there were six horses during the filming."

The infinite horizon of the Camargue reveals a sense of freedom, "a taste of paradise" which never left him. "During the filming, which lasted six months, I was going to school on horseback". Alain identifies so much with intrepid Folco. The producer Albert Lamorisse asked him to "play more", and even smile. "I could not, I really lived the tragic fate of the boy and the horse. And then I was terrified by Lamorisse and his camera."
...
For the last twenty years Alain Emery has lived in a village in the Alpilles. He became a father late in life and his daughter Louise handles the saddle with great happiness. "At school, the other kids call her the daughter of the boy Crin Blanc".

There is a 2008 documentary "Portrait d'Alain Emery, l'enfant qui ne savait pas sourire" which roughly translates as "Portrait of Alain Emery, the child who did not smile". 

I was captivated by the film's beautiful photography and its motif of child integrity versus adult avarice, and so I have pondered to what degree it meets the test: "whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise". There will always be those that look for a more sinister side but to the pure, all things are pure.

* * *

And, indeed, what happened to the producer's son Pascal, the Red Balloon boy, who was Folco's baby brother in the film Crin Blanc and then only 3 years old? In 1960 Albert Lamorisse produced a sequel, Le Voyage en ballon, staring his son but it was not so much of a success. Here is a low quality rendition on YouTube:

Pascal, age 3, as Folco's baby brother in Crin Blanc

Pascal, age 6, as himself in The Red Balloon

Pascal Lamorisse, 50 or so years later

In the Los Angeles Times, November 15th, 2007, Susan King records:

When Pascal Lamorisse was a child, he got to run around Paris followed by a magical red balloon. "I enjoyed it," recalls Pascal. "I was playing with magic."

Now 57, he will forever be known as the boy in...the short film "The Red Balloon," which was written and directed by his father, Albert Lamorisse.

Pascal, who has run his father's company since his death in a helicopter crash in 1970, has restored his father's beloved children's film, which was shot in vibrant Technicolor, as well as his Cannes award-winning 1953 family short "White Mane."

...

So how did the balloon follow the little boy like a family pet around the City of Light? "Very thin strings," says Pascal.

Because his father wrote his films as the shooting progressed, Pascal says that every day was an adventure. "He didn't' give me direction," he adds. "I knew what I had to do, but I could do it my way. It was very easy to play whatever he asked me to do."

Pascal says he had "a wonderful youth." His father, who was only 48 when he died, was "extremely creative and very sweet. Actually, he could relate to the world of the younger generation in the sense that he lived in a very poetical world himself." 

His father had rules, though -- no cheating or lying. But Pascal did lie once to his father when he was about 4. "There was a book about Tibet, and for some reason I was in love with a photo from the book," he recalls. "I got my scissors and I cut it out and put the photo in my room someplace.

"One day he goes, 'Pascal, did you use the scissors and cut anything out of the book?' I said, 'Of course not.' He said, 'Well, well, well. I have good reason to believe that you did it. You should have asked me, and I would have given it to you.' I realised I couldn't lie to him. He could understand more than most people. "And I still have the book!"

Which reminds me - as a child, one Christmas I was given a book about electricity (my favourite subject). Whilst the present-opening festivities continued I was doodling (as one does) - designing some amazing imagined invention - and found to my horror that I was doodling in ink on a page in this book. I hastily exited the room and found paper and sellotape to cover up my sin. Whether anyone realised what I had done I know not, but I was ashamed of that page as long as I kept the book, even more as the sellotape began to yellow with age.