Le Bal

Le Bal (1983) is a French-Italian musical drama from director Ettore Scola you can watch online on iFILM. One hundred and twelve minutes. No dialogue — not a single word.

A dance hall in Paris. The decades roll through: the jazz twenties, the Nazi occupation, the Liberation, the student uprisings of 1968, the disco years. The venue stays the same; the couples change. War knocks on the doors between numbers and then fades. Performers from the Théâtre du Soleil collective play dozens of characters across sixty years, communicating everything — love, fear, grief, desire — through movement and music alone.

The film claimed the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and a César Award for Best Film. Scola built a history of France without words, and it turns out to be a more honest account than most films with scripts. Watch Le Bal (1983) online on iFILM.