Le Bal

The entire film takes place inside one hall and contains not a single line of dialogue. Ettore Scola shows a Paris ballroom on a handful of separate nights between 1936 and 1983, the same performers playing different people in each section, and the history of France passes through the dancing. The sequence runs: the Popular Front in 1936, the occupation in 1940, the liberation in 1944, profiteering in 1946, rock and Algeria in 1956, the events of May in 1968, and disco in 1983. Since nobody speaks, everything you learn comes from the music, the clothes and how people approach each other. Its best perception is repetition. The same movements, the same shyness and the same refusals recur in every era. It won the César for best film. The difficulty is that without some grasp of French political history several transitions look like nothing more than a change of costume, and the absence of speech eventually creates distance. Who it is for: viewers who like formal experiment and storytelling through dance. Who it is not for: anyone who needs character and dialogue.