Neorealism was born in postwar Italy. By the mid-Fifties, nevertheless, its best examples had been made overseas. “Mandabi” (“The Cash Order”), the second characteristic movie by the dean of West African filmmakers Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), is one. Filmed with a solid of nonprofessionals on the streets of Dakar, Senegal, it a mordent fable of excellent fortune gone unhealthy. Newly restored, the 1968 film might be streamed from Movie Discussion board, beginning Jan. 15.
“Cease killing us with hope,” exclaims one of many two wives of the film’s dignified but hapless protagonist Ibrahima, a religious Muslim who hasn’t labored in 4 years. The postman simply instructed them that, like a bolt out of the blue, a cash order had arrived from Ibrahima’s nephew in Paris.
Information travels quick. Needy neighbors, to not point out the native imam, arrive with their palms out. In the meantime, Ibrahima learns that as a way to money the cash order, he will need to have an id card, and to get an id card, he wants a beginning certificates, and to acquire a beginning certificates, he will need to have a good friend in courtroom — to not point out {a photograph} and the cash to get one. Being illiterate, Ibrahima may even require somebody to elucidate each process. As soon as the command middle for France’s African colonies, Dakar has no scarcity of bureaucrats.
Whereas it’s by no means made clear precisely how Ibrahim has managed to assist two wives, seven kids and his personal self-importance in a metropolis the place recent water is a money commodity, his wives wait on him as if he had been a child. An precise toddler wails off-camera as Ibrahima is pampered however a extra profound irony considerations his id. His mission to money his nephew’s cash order reveals that he has none, not less than in any official sense. Worse, his quest for a windfall that isn’t even his, units him up as a mark for all method of swindlers, hustlers and thieves — in a phrase, society at massive.
The individuals Ibrahima encounters are largely consumed with self-interest. “Mandabi” nevertheless is kind of beneficiant — wealthy intimately, a feast for the eyes and ears. The colours are vibrant and saturated; the title tune was an area hit till, apparently recognizing its subversive energy, the Senegalese authorities banned it from the radio. (Primarily based on a brief story by Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, the film has an advanced relation to authority which can account for the lower than convincing optimism of its tacked-on ending.)
Reviewing “Mandabi” when it was proven on the 1969 New York Movie Pageant, The New York Instances movie critic Roger Greenspun wrote that, “as a comedy coping with life’s miseries, it shows a managed sophistication.” Certainly, “Mandabi” might initially seem to be a narrative out of Kafka or the E book of Job, but it surely basically criticizes a post-colonial system that pits class towards class within the exploitation of practically all.
It’s additionally a satire of self-deception. Years in the past, Sembène instructed two interviewers from Movie Quarterly that “Mandabi” had been proven all through Africa “as a result of each different nation claims that what occurs within the film happens solely in Senegal.”
Accessible for screening beginning Jan. 15; filmforum.org.
