Video Movies : <i> Recent releases, reviewed by Times critics.</i> : **** Excellent *** Good ** Fair * Poor
*** 1/2 “Black and White in Color.†Lorimar. $39.95. NR.
Jean-Jacques Annaud’s witty anti-war comedy--the 1977 foreign film Oscar winner--pits a band of hysterically patriotic French colonials against their German counterparts in an absurd encounter in the Ivory Coast: a mini-war staged with the colorful futility of a wrecked picnic. The two “Army†leaders are--like Fresnay and Von Stroheim in “Grand Illusionâ€--natural comrades, tied by bonds of honor and professionalism; and the people who started the war sit on the sidelines like sports fans, madly--and safely--cheering away. Annaud shows all this with amused savoir-faire and a lyrical wit: human absurdity splashed by African sunlight.
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