The French film BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR brilliantly exposes the twin absurdities of nationalism and war from a socialist perspective. Filmed entirely in the Ivory Coast, the film uses colonial French West Africa and an unnamed, neighbouring German colony during WWI as the backdrop for the film’s underlying socio-political message. Although this film is little known today, it won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The film opens in 1914 with German colonial officials amicably interacting with their neighbouring French colonial counterparts. The Germans buy supplies from the French and are friends as well as business partners. The Germans and French consider themselves equals, while they both see their native subjects as primitive, inferior beings capable only of manual labour. Clearly, the colonial masters represent the international capitalist classes, while the African natives represent the exploited proletariat.

So primitive were communications in colonial Africa, that neither the French nor Germans discover their respective nations are at war until early 1915. As patriotic Frenchmen, the French priests and colonial administrators forget about their friendship with their fellow colonial oppressors, and raise an army of natives to attack the Germans. The Germans have their own army of Africans to counter the French.

The absurdity of black Africans fighting other black Africans in the name of Germany and France should be patently absurd to anyone. The African conscripts have no interest in the outcome of the war, and the only difference between the German Africans and French Africans is which European power controls their village. The white colonial masters do none of the actual fighting, while the Africans on both sides succumb to disease and enemy bullets. The absurdity reaches a comedic apex in this film when French Africans screaming “viva la France!” are answered by German Africans screaming “Deutschland über alles!” in a battle scene.

With Anglo-French dominion over The Atlantic, the Germans never had a chance of holding onto their African colonies during WWI. As German resistance crumbles throughout Africa, a British army of black Africans led by an Indian with an Oxford English accent arrives to occupy the German colony. The only thing that changes is the Africans under German control will now be under British control.

Following the German capitulation, the French and Germans reunite, shake hands, make light of the fighting and have a laughter filled, drunken party attended to by African servants. This film illustrates that warfare merely serves as a temporary interruption to business as usual of the international capitalist classes. After the war, everyone can shake hands and renew their friendships. The international proletariat, with no stake in the outcome of the war, does the dying and fighting for both sides.

At the party, a French naturalist/ philologist who was opposed to the war meets a German naturalist/ philologist. The Frenchman says he was a socialist at university, to which the German replies “me too.” The two walk off into the sunset together as the credits role, apparently symbolising the hope for a future world, socialist utopia.

Regardless of your own political views, this film is worth watching as an example of 1970’s Western European leftist cinema.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV