Black and White in Color

There’s something really quite fitting about the end of this film that rather sums up the whole approach to Africa that was taken by the European powers. This film is set on the Côte D’Ivoire where the war has once again pitched the adjacent French and German forces against each other. The French aren’t immediately convinced that this is remotely their war, but eventually the soldiers decide that they ought to do their bit so round up their native bearers and start handing out rifles. If it wasn’t a war for the white folks, what on Earth did it have to do with the locals? The only Monsieur with any semblance of a brain is his head is “Fresnay” (Jacques Spiesser) who’s ostensibly just there to examine the plant life, but swiftly concluding that most of that had more military savvy than the soldiers of “Sgt. Bosselet” (Jean Carmet) he takes charge. The Bosch aren’t really his problem. That’s more down to the local merchants - led by the venal “Rechampot” (Jacques Dufilho), who care only about their status, trade, wealth and their tins of sardines! It’s fair to say that the opposing forces of the Kaiser aren’t exactly raring to go on the battlefront either, so what Jean-Jacques Annaud really delivers here is a war-free war film that pokes fun at the colonial classes, the half-baked military forces that acted as their enforcers and at the levels of hypocrisy as “Fresnay” only goes and falls for an Ivorian gal, too! There isn’t really any character of note from amongst the villagers, but I thought that worked quite well as it sort of suggested they were sitting back watching their bwana-folks lurch from one silly scenario to the other whilst they just bided their time. Some of the humour is a little on the bawdy side, but for the most part this could apply to any of those nations who entered Africa in the Victorian era armed with bibles and bayonets, who treated the locals with utter contempt and who, ultimately, became sots, bullies and impotent whilst carted around as if they were Tutankhamen. It has the look of a Kinski film to it, I thought, with a convincing scruffiness and authenticity set amidst an East Africa that makes these interlopers look as ridiculous and pompous as I’m sure Annaud desired.