In an early and important scene in J. Lee Thompson’s
The Yellow Balloon, two young boys, Frankie Palmer (Andrew Ray) and Ron Williams (Stephen Fenemore), chase each other through bombed-out ruins, laughing and playing and pulling a balloon across the debris of humanity’s most evil episode. This innocence will be momentarily shattered when Ron takes a fall, his little dead body a haunting symbol of postwar cynicism which petty thief Len Turner (William Sylvester) is pleased to capitalize on; having witnessed Ron’s death by chance from nearby, Turner approaches the scene and claims that Frankie pushed the boy and that he’ll report it to the police unless Frankie does a few favors for him, such as stealing his parents’ savings and acting as decoy for a robbery. Murder ensues. The luminous Kathleen Ryan plays Frankie’s mother, and Hy Hazell plays Mary, the wonderful stranger who rescues Frankie from the street. Despite having a modest budget, Thompson makes use of extraordinary set pieces, such as the aforementioned war ruins and an abandoned, underground rail station which accommodates a protracted hide-and-seek sequence that rivals the final act of
The Third Man (1949).
