Le bal (Italian: Ballando ballando, French pronunciation: [lə bal], meaning "The ball") is a 1983 Italian-Franco-Algerian musical film without dialogue directed by Ettore Scola that represents a fifty-year story of French society by way of a ballroom in France.

The film begins with a victory of the left-wing Popular Front in the 1936 French legislative election.

It consists of a frame story set in the present and seven flashbacks, each depicting a period of the 20th century.

While the party is dancing a valse musette, a pretentious bourgeois enters the restaurant with his festively dressed wife.

The woman allows herself to be kissed by a dancer (dressed like Jean Gabin in Pépé le Moko); her husband first tries to take cocaine and later attempts suicide.

US culture moves in: While the Glenn Miller hit In the Mood is played, the waiter tries the new Coca-Cola and society tries the new swing - they are still struggling with both.

The former collaborator drags two GIs into the pub; one of them has a trumpet and plays La vie en rose.

[2] Vincent Canby from The New York Times gave the film a very good review, stating: "Because Le Bal is a spectacle, most of the performers, unfortunately, remain anonymous, though their contributions are enormous.

In the 1936 sequence, Mr Scola and his cinematographer, Ricardo Aronovich[3] miraculously drain virtually all the color from the images to create a look that suggests hand-tinted photographs that have begun to fade.