Ousmane Sembene (1923-2007) is generally considered to have been "the father of African cinema". All of his movies I've seen (Mandabi, Ceddo, Xala, Moolaadé) have considerable social critical edge. His 56-minute first foray "La  noire de..." (Black Girl, 1965) adapting a novel he wrote is the first feature film made by a black, sub-Saharan African. Alas, it is also somewhat dull with overkill in driving home every point. There is more interior monologue (voiced over) than dialogue in the movie, all in French.

I'd estimate that more of the movie takes place in France than in Senegal. It begins with Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) disembarking from a ship in Cannes. She has been a nursemaid for the three children of a French couple in Dakar. They take her with them to a spacious apartment with an ocean view in Antibes. She had looked forward to seeing France and meeting French people, but feels a prisoner in the apartment. She only leaves it to go to the grocer's, though why she could not stroll off that pathway is not clear to me.

In Dakar she took care of the three young children, but in Antibes, her irritable mistress (Anne-Marie Jelinek) takes for granted that Diouma will be cook and maid, especially before the children join them. The audience knows that Diouma speaks fluent French, but Madame thinks that Diouma cannot speak French and is able to obey commands in French the way a dog "understands."

Monsieur (Robert Fontaine) is hitting the bottle heavily, waiting to go back to Africa, but somewhat cushioning his wife's nastiness.

A complaining letter from Diouna's mother (written by a professional letter writer) berates Diouna for not sending any of her wages back. In fact, she has not received any.

Diouna feels painfully alone, imprisoned or enslaved by Madame, who had been far kinder in Africa (where there were multiple servants). Madame is irritated at how dressed up Diouna always is, bejeweled and wearing stiletto heels. (These do seem not just impractical, but perilous to me.)

There are flashbacks of waiting on a Dakar street corner for someone to hire her and a romance with a handsome African nationalist (Momar Nar Sene) who helped her to find where to try to find employment.

The black and white visual compositions are splendid. I understand that Diouma feels helplessly marooned in the apartment in Antibes, but wonder where the resiliency she displayed in trying to find a job has gone that she cannot venture to, say, the beach that is visible from the apartment windows. To me, even acknowledging that Madame takes out some of her frustrations on Diouma, Diouma could venture out more. Or refuse to cook and clean, since she was hired to take care of the children.

Perhaps the use of Senegalese music makes it seem she is less cutoff from her culture. The music is soundtrack that we hear, presumably not in her head.

The DVD also includes "Borom Sarret," a 19-minute short made a year earlier by Sembene that follows a cart driver through a disastrous unlucrative day  in Dakar. ("borm sarret' is a pidginized version of 'bonhomme charrette" a French term for a cart driver whose cart is for hire.)

In "Borom Sarret," Sembene  manages twice to show the pain and suffering inflicted by bureaucratic rule enforcement (by black bureaucrats, as in his trenchant "Xala"). It also relies on voiced over interior monologue, but is much tighter than "Black Girl." (I have been noticing how much voiceover narrative there is in post-WWII French films, including small-n noirs.


Being in French, set mostly in France, by someone who had spent the years 1947-1963 in France, I think that these pioneer African films are in some sense French finds. The French people in it do not come off well. They are certainly not post-colonialist in attitude!

©  2008, Stephen O. Murray

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Yes

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