Review of Black and White in Color (1976) by David L — 04 Feb 2014

The recently release DVD of this film comes with the documentary The Sky Above, The Mud Below. Both were produced by well-respected Swiss producer Arthur Cohn. This was Jean-Jacques Annaud debut feature film.

The soundtrack and camera work are well done. But the main attraction is the absurdly comic actions of the French colonists in Africa during the final years of WWI. The French colonists from one village have been friends with German colonists in a neighboring village.

Yet, when they see an old newspaper from their homeland announcing the start of WWI, the always drunk sergeant of the colony, the two missionaries, the two brothers who run the general store with their wives, and a couple other colonists, decide to declare war on their German neighbors.

The white colonists treat war like a picnic, though, as they expect the African natives to do the fighting and dying for them. A few of the African servants of the colonists make wisecracks about the absurdity of their white "masters," so the movie is not entirely in the voice of the colonists.

After several botched attempts at playing war, Hubert Fresnoy (Spiesser), a young scholar, who is against the fighting at the beginning, takes command of the colony and even marries a native woman. He scandalizes the rest of the colonists, but is much more successful at leading the war efforts until a troop of British colonized Indian soldiers arrive to announce the end of the war.

It turns out that Hubert and the leader of the German colony are really very similar, and the importance that the various colonists feel about their positions in this "wild" country is totally blown out of proportion.