Le Bal opens as a somewhat tacky French disco slowly awakens – lights go on, music starts up. The first patrons arrive, one after another: nine women, the walking wounded of the Me Generation. Each one stops before the mirror, scrutinizing her armor for possible chinks. You’re given ample time to study this line-up of grotesques and see just how disconcertingly close they are to the real thing. Then the men enter, eleven of them all in a herd, each as possessed and manic as the women are. You’re still sorting out this menagerie when the cruising commences and the film explodes into action. Individuals just miss connecting, couples form and collapse and reform, potential partners are sniffed at and rejected – we all know the choreography. In fact, this familiarity is one of the strengths of Le Bal; although the action is hilariously exaggerated, it achieves an emotional resonance, a shock of recognition that could elude only the catatonic.
This opening sequence, in which not a word is spoken, is one of the finest created by Italian director Ettore Scola. But the film’s greatness only begins with that tour de force. Scola retreats from the ‘80s back to 1936, when the disco was a dance hall and its patrons were celebrating the Popular Front. The same actors appear in new guises, and for the length of the film no new actors are introduced, no dialogue is uttered, no glimpse is seen of the world outside the dance hall. Le Bal gallops on wordlessly, overflowing with music, as Scola’s prism of ballroom and dancers refracts pivotal historic events: the Nazi occupation, the liberation of France (and its cultural occupation by the Americans), the Algerian War, the ’68 riots. As in his La nuit de Varennes and A Special Day, Scola’s concern is not so much history itself, as the powerless people who feel its aftershocks; the individuals who reflect, combat, ignore, even transcend history. His camera relentlessly explores their silliness and frailty along with their strength and beauty.
Le Bal was freely adapted from a play, and most of its 23 actors are alumni of the theatrical production. The ensemble acting thus has a richness and integrity that few films enjoy. The recycling of actors, far from becoming gimmicky, actually creates new dimensions of interest; you’re eager to see how each one tops what he or she did just before. The recognition factor also has the benefit of creating an illusory familiarity with the new characters of each era. In fact, Le Bal serves as a textbook on how to turn potential limitations into assets. Scola shrewdly paces his film so the survey of eras never seems mechanical or predictable. Sometimes he telescopes time (the ‘50s cover not just Algeria but the transition from Latin music to rock & roll); sometimes he plays against our expectations (evoking the ’68 uprisings in a brief scene of quiescence and intimacy). The restriction of the ballroom set prompts Scola to outdo himself as a master of the long take and the moving camera. In all, Le Bal is one of the finest and most unusual films of recent years.
(This review first appeared in The Film Journal, May 1984.)
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For more on Ettore Scola, see:
Film Interview: Ettore Scola
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 