BLACK GIRL Movie Review

Une Noire de…
La Noire de…

The first feature-length film by Senegal's Ousmane Sembène tells the tragic, inevitable story of a young Senegalese maid's forced exile when her white employers want to use her as a servant at their home in the south of France. The film that is most often cited as marking the birth of the African cinema, Black Girl (the original French title of which was the far more telling Une Noire de …) remains one of the most powerfully disturbing depictions of the dehumanizing power of racism in the history of cinema. Sembène has said that his early interest in the power of film was sparked by the overt racism of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, in which the 1936 Olympic Games were portrayed as a paean to white—particularly German—“superiority.” (Even Riefenstahl, however, couldn't figure out a way to remove Jesse Owens from the final cut.) Sembène knew that if this great medium could be used to promote racism, it could be used even more effectively to expose and denounce it. His heartbreakingly spare and unflinching debut feature proved that he was right, and it remains a chilling and unforgettable experience.

NEXT STOP … Mandabi, Ceddo, Guelwaar

1966 65m/B Robert Fontaine, Anne-Marie Jelinek, Therese N'Bissine Diop, Momar Nar Sene; D: Ousmane Sembene; W: Ousmane Sembene; C: Christian Lacoste. NYR