Over There

By Christopher Porterfield

BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOR

Directed by JEAN-JACQUES ANNAUD

Screenplay by JEAN-JACQUES ANNAUD and GEORGES CONCHON

England entered World War I, according to the Chancellor of Germany, "just for a scrap of paper."* In Black and White in Color, a dusty outpost in French West Africa also enters the war for a scrap of paper--a yellowed newspaper from home, which reveals that the conflict has been raging in Europe for six months.

Until this moment in 1915, the white colonials in the outpost have been on congenial terms with a nearby, equally unaware German settlement. Now they work themselves into a froth of jingoism and decide they must attack their neighbors. More precisely--and this touches one of the film's controlling ironies--they decide their black natives must attack the Germans' natives.

Act of Atonement. Black and White in Color is the dark-horse winner of this year's Oscar for best foreign picture. It was filmed by a French unit in the Ivory Coast in what almost amounts to an act of atonement: the movie not only presents a comically petty microcosm of war, but in its terse, understated way gives a withering account of the racial ignorance and contempt on which colonialism was built. The result hardly renews one's faith in human nature, but it is consistently riveting and grimly amusing.

The scene is vividly set--the metallic glare of the sun, the midday lulls during which the air sings with insects. The French merchants and their wives connive and squabble among themselves, fighting off the boredom and psychic impotence that come with their isolation. Missionary priests browbeat the natives for wood carvings, then ship the choicest home to be sold and burn the rest as being in "bad taste."

The film does not shrink from portraying the natives as largely a benighted, scruffy lot who are driven to practicing their own reciprocal racism. Two uncomprehending priests, being borne in divans by sweating natives, are charmed by a work song that actually says, "My white man is fat as a bull and his feet stink."

When the German settlement rebuffs the French attack and threatens retaliation, this fragile social fabric disintegrates amid bluster, cowardice, hoarding and panic. Only one man keeps his head: a quiet, boyish geographer (Jacques Spiesser) who reveals an unsuspected flair for command. He supersedes the decent but feckless resident sergeant (Jean Carmet) and brilliantly mobilizes the local garrison.

However, the geographer's discipline and intellect turn out to mask a fanatic's zeal. He imposes an implacable martial law and calmly uses torture to recruit troops from the countryside. Even his eccentric respect for the humanity of the natives becomes a form of arrogance. He enjoys publicly parading his black consort in order to mortify the provincial gentilities of the merchants' wives. His ascendancy, far from a triumph of the humane or heroic, is a kind of parable of the tendency of a fearful populace to conspire in the rise of a dictator.

All these points are admirably made, but they click into place a little too neatly. The film has an air of premeditation, an almost palpable sense of the film maker's mordant intelligence shaping the scenes. Of course, if you are a director making your first full-length feature, as Jean-Jacques Annaud is here, this is the kind of flaw to have. It certainly does not prevent Annaud from bringing things to a powerfully ironic finish.

The war ends with the German settlement being liberated by a British detachment--commanded, in another tart touch, by a swarthy Indian captain. Under the terms of the distant armistice, the captain claims the German territory for England. The French and German colonials sit down again over drinks, having learned nothing from the experience but that "the niggers who were German are now English." The geographer finds that his German counterpart is a fellow university man, and they share a well-bred chuckle over their common socialist youth. Race and class reassert themselves. There is no sense of relief: ahead, as we know from the vantage point of 1977, still lies the tur bulent, bloody ordeal of 20th century Africa.

Christopher Porterfield

* A reference to the treaty guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality.

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