Longing for Africa
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Longing for Africa |
| Original title | La Victoire en chantant Alternative title Noirs et blancs en couleur |
| Country of production | Ivory Coast , France , Federal Republic of Germany , Switzerland |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean-Jacques Annaud |
| script | Jean-Jacques Annaud Georges Conchon |
| production |
Arthur Cohn Jacques Perrin Giorgio Silagni |
| music | Pierre Bachelet |
| camera | Claude Agostini |
| cut | Françoise Bonnot |
| occupation | |
| |
Longing for Africa (original title: La Victoire en chantant , from 1977 Noirs et blancs en couleurs ) from 1976 is the first feature film by the director Jean-Jacques Annaud. The colonial satire received the award for best foreign language film at the 1977 Academy Awards .
action
A sleepy border area in French Equatorial Africa in January 1915. While the German colonial rulers tried to teach their askaris about Prussian discipline through drill , the French in neighboring Fort Coulais had an almost decadent lifestyle. You live in harmony with the Germans and you don't care about big politics. As a representative of the authorities, Sergeant Bosselet is less interested in the training of his African soldiers than in amorous adventures with their sisters, the two Rechampot brothers live a marriage of three as wholesalers and the priests care less about the salvation of the natives, but rather bring it about their fetishes , to be able to sell them in Europe. None of them are worthy representatives of a “superior civilization”. Only the student and geographer Hubert Fresnoy, who is only temporarily in Africa for a kind of internship, approaches the natives without reservation and looks down contemptuously at his compatriots.
When a six-month-old newspaper announced the beginning of the First World War , life changed suddenly. All of a sudden a wave of patriotism spreads and the French demand that Bosselet and his soldiers attack the German fortress. Only Fresnoy, as a staunch pacifist and socialist , insists on negotiating with the Germans, but is not heard.
Pressed by his compatriots, Bosselet set out in a hurry and unprepared to go to war against the Germans. His compatriots accompany the troops as if on a Sunday excursion and want to watch the supposedly easy victory over a picnic from a safe distance. But the Germans repel the attack with their machine guns , and panic breaks out when the first wounded stream back. The French civilians flee back to Fort Coulais in a rush without taking care of the wounded.
That same night, Fresnoy took command of the border town with Bosselet's approval . By means of coercive measures such as recruiting or confiscation of supplies, as well as based on the newspaper reports, he succeeds in forming an armed force that is powerful for the conditions there. Fresnoy becomes the absolute ruler without his position being called into question. He begins an organized siege of the German fort, which he maintains even in the rainy season . The Africans have to dig trenches in the pouring rain . A capture of the fort, however, does not succeed. Fresnoy shows increasingly arrogant and power-conscious traits, even if he always remains civilized. He now has a local lover too, but treats her with respect and lets her appear as the “woman of the house” on an equal footing.
When foreign soldiers are reported one day, the residents are initially unsure whether they are French or Germans. To their surprise, the Union Jack shows up from a distance and British colonial troops march. An Indian officer in British service announces to the perplexed French that under a treaty between France and the British Empire, this area is now administered by them. The three German officers stretch their arms in front of the Indians, the French and Germans celebrate together as if the war had never happened, while Paul Rechampot smugly notes that nothing has changed, except “ that German negroes are now becoming English negroes” . Only Fresnoy stays aloof and finds a soul mate in his counterpart, Hauptmann Kraft. In retrospect, Fresnoy wonders how he got into the matter. His new friend announces to Fresnoy that he has nothing to do with the war, because he is actually a socialist. " Moi aussi ", me too, replies Fresnoy. The final picture shows the two men from behind, walking towards a rising artificial sun; they are like twins: same stature, same gait, same suit, same hairstyle.
criticism
"Annaud creates a true reflection of the First World War on the smallest scale, which shows his excessive madness in the form of a comic farce."
"The director succeeds in creating a portrayal of outgoing imperialism composed of bad details."
"Satirical study of the casualness of opposition, the stupidity and mechanisms of colonialism."
background
For the shooting, Jean-Jacques Annaud was able to use his knowledge of Africa, which he had acquired during his time as a development worker in Cameroon, as he reports on his website.
In his own words, he owed the idea for his film to his stay in Cameroon. While looking through documents in the National Archives in Yaoundé , he came across the manuscript "L'Histoire Générale du Cameroun" by the Reverend Father Mveng . Especially the section on " Major von Rabben, who immortalized himself through his heroic resistance against the Allied forces in the glorious Battle of Mora during the First World War" aroused his interest and Annaud decided to go to the scene of the event, one remote place on the border with Chad .
The village board, a veteran of the events, would have asked him a question that had preoccupied him for 50 years: “ Why, ” says the man, “ would the French and Germans not have fought the First World War in their own homeland, but rather would have Chose Mora as a theater of war? “According to Annaud, this question triggered the idea for the film.
Financing the film proved difficult. Annaud estimated 5 million francs . By chance someone in charge of the France 3 television station heard about his project. The broadcaster eventually took over 10 percent of the financing. He received a further 10 percent through film funding. Initially, President Albert Bongo of Gabon also showed interest in the film and offered to cover half of the production costs if the film was shot in Gabon. However, the jungle of Gabon turned out to be unsuitable and Annaud abandoned the project there. In the end he decided on the Ivory Coast as the location after receiving the same offer from there. After Annaud had a total of six financiers for his film, he was still missing 27 percent of the production costs. Arthur Cohn then agreed to acquire the foreign marketing rights for the remaining costs. After Annaud, Cohn is the only one who got out of the film without financial loss.
On his homepage, Annaud draws parallels between the figure of Fresnoy and his own person: Like him, he had dropped out of a Sorbonne student when he started working as a development aid worker in Cameroon. And from then on, his view of the world had changed forever. Therefore, Longing for Africa is his most personal film. Above all, it was important to him to portray the abuse of locals as cannon fodder. He also discovered the "inner African" in himself.
Although the critics were delighted, Annaud's first feature film was a financial flop. After winning the Oscar for the title Black and White in Color , he came back to French cinemas in the French translation of this title, again without success.
The beginning of the patriotic song " Le Chant du Départ " was the inspiration for the original French title, "La Victoire en chantant" . The song is also the theme song for the film.
The film initially went unnoticed in Germany. It was only after the success of the feature film “ Out of Africa ” (1985) that the film was marketed in Germany. The bombastic German distribution title alluded to the Hollywood flick. On February 12, 1987, the film premiered in German cinemas and was not a success here either.
Publications
For a long time the film was only available as a VHS video from VPS Film-Entertainment (1992) in Germany . As part of an "Arthur Cohn Edition" , the film was also released in 2003 in a DVD set of all of Cohn's Oscar-winning films.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b quotation from DigitalVD on www.digitalvd.de ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). Archive version of February 11, 2013; accessed on December 8, 2017
- ^ Longing for Africa in the Lexicon of International Films
- ↑ actually meant Captain Ernst von Raben († 1924), see Golf Dornseif: "Cameroon's final battle for the Moraberg fortress" ( Memento from November 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 718 kB)
- ↑ a b c film information ( memento of April 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on the homepage of Jean-Jacques Annaud
- ↑ www.moviesection.de ( Memento from September 19, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ “Die Zeit” from February 20, 1987