Black and White in Color

Jean-Jacques Annaud's first film, and it takes direct aim at colonialism. 1915, a small colonial town in French West Africa. The French learn that war has begun in Europe months late, from an out-of-date newspaper. There is a German post next door and the two sides have been neighbours for years. On hearing the news the French decide to go to war. What follows is comedy: nobody knows how to fight, nobody wants to fight, and local people are enlisted for the attack. They are the ones who die. Throughout, the ridiculous quarrel between Europeans is paid for with African lives, and Annaud does not soften it. It was shot in Ivory Coast. It won the Oscar for foreign language film, received on behalf of Ivory Coast, which had submitted it. An important work for anyone who likes satire built on colonialism. But the film puts Europeans at the centre and never enters the interior lives of its African characters, which is where, seen now, it falls into the thing it criticises.