La victoire en chantant

Black and White in Color is a French anti war movie, done as a black comedy, which won the Best Foreign Film Academy Award in 1976.

World War I is the setting for the French colonists fighting the Germans on the Ivory Coast. The French draft the locals in order to battle the Germans, supplying the natives with guns, uniforms, and other equipment and attempt to train their reluctant soldiers in the ways of war.

The result is a combination of keystone cops and a Marx Brothers saga, with everyone running around, clueless. No one really gets hurt as the real fighting is occurring far from Africa. I am reminded of The Mouse That Roared with Peter Sellers for comparison to Black and White in Color. A funny satire with a positive universal message on man's follies, this is worth watching.

Annaud's Black and White in Color is an ambitious film packaged as a modest anti-war satire. It meets and exceeds its ambitions, with an intelligent script that keeps us, the audience, fully in-the-know throughout. There is a satire of colonialism, of civilian zealots, of arrogance, of racism, of the Great War and politicians, of the emptiness of slogans and braggadocio, and also of the lust for power and the acquiescence of ordinary people to powerful people. The on-location filming in the Ivory Coast was a treat. It's a story that keeps us thinking all the time about what's absurd, what's realistic, and about knowing right from wrong.

Fall of 1914. French and Germans, living in colonies side by side (Togo or Cameroon, take your pick), feel compelled to be at war with each other since that is what's happening back home, too. Naively and almost playfully at first, until the game starts getting uglier and they experience the horror of casualties nobody had really wanted. Both sides get professional help and they become hardened by the everyday routine (the Germans winning, because their officer studied in Heidelberg...)and start killing each other more efficiently, until finally the war ends and the British arrive to restore law and order in the territories. The long column of British troops, all Africans and Asians, is led by one junior officer on horseback - who when his face is eventually revealed, turns out to be Indian.

Annaud shot the film in the Ivory Coast, then a very staunchly pro-French country. He refused to show anybody the script and pretended he was shooting a very different type of movie. At the gala premiere performance in Abidjan, when the French officials realized the entire picture was a spoof on French colonial policies, they walked out, much to the embarrassment of the Ivorians, who were just as unaware of what Annaud had been up to...

Somewhat familiar, but often very funny anti-war, anti-imperialist satire/farce.

A motley bunch of French, holding down a colonial fort in Africa, discover that WWI has been declared, so go and attack their German neighbors, using their native semi-servants as soldiers, with disastrous results.

Few films manage to wrestle so well, with so many issues – racism, nationalism, religious hypocrisy, etc.

If it kept to it's most original moments, and didn't fall over the edge occasionally into the silly or obviously preachy at times it would be a great film. As is, I might well re-visit. Some professional critics rave, some hate it.

At the time I'm writing this we are at war in the USA. I would hope that anyone worn down by the reality of these times would see this picture. What a testament to the insanity.

My favorite part in this movie is when the natives are traveling and singing as they carry the lazy priests along their journey. The translations of the lyrics are hilarious, considering the pompous priests have no idea what they are singing and think its rather quaint.

A 10 and a 0 poke.*

*see my other reviews for poke definition