Word: bal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...case of Le Bal, Italian director Ettore Scola's latest film, skepticism is unfortunately somewhat justified. For though the film is, in many respects, both an ingenious work of art and a profoundly telling social commentary, it is not without flaws--flaws which intermittently cause the audience to question whether the sum of the parts is ultimately worth the whole...
...abstract, Le Bal has the potential to be a successful film. Instead of recounting history through the conventional means of one family or a set of individuals, Scola charts the cultural transformations of France by observing attitudinal changes in the patrons of a ballroom from 1936 to 1983. The film opens with a random group of men and women entering the ballroom, and through an innovative and rather stylized flashback technique, comes full circle at the film's conclusion...
Because of Le Bal's unusual nature, generalizations about its overall quality are difficult to make. While the experimental technique of omitting dialogue is both intriguing and at points highly effective, it often makes the film seem nothing more than a piece of art for art's sake. That Le Bal is, both conceptually and visually, a work of art is unquestionable. That its artistic value alone merits two hours of screen time for what ought to have been a 30-minute production is something only each individual can determine...
...Bal has no dialogue -only song, dance and wallflower vignettes. A forlorn aristocrat fishes his monocle out of a champagne glass, fixes it in his eye, and one bubbly tear slides down his face. A 1930s hard-boiled hero, based on the young Jean Gabin, reappears 20 years later as the aging Gabin's Inspector Maigret. There is plenty of verve here but little charm; the relentless closeups favored by Director Ettore Scola (A Special Day, La Nuit de Varennes) turn every character into a comic-pathetic gargoyle. It is left to the nostalgic sound track to evoke...
Inside the stadium, where the usual phalanx of police with dogs and automatic weapons ringed the field before the game, the Soviet Union's hard-working Andrei Bal shocked the crowd of 70,000 when his shot was mishandled by Brazil's Goalie Waldir Peres Arruda. Then came a dazzling display of attacking, creative soccer. A player named Dr. Socrates B. Oliveira, 28, Brazil's physician-turned-forward and the squad's field general, came to life against the Soviets, who had trained near Moscow and were unprepared for the 86° heat of Seville. Socrates...