Black Girl (1966)

I've often thought (and sometimes have stated) that for a film to truly succeed it must have a powerful ending. Whether that power be found in deeply profound thought, or emotional resonence, does not matter. All that matters, to a degree, is how you end a film. Black Girl ends on a profound thought which translates into a strong emotional pull.

Black Girl is about a young Senegalese woman named Diouanne who is brought over from her native land to work for a French couple (in their native land) under the false pretenses that she would be caring for the couples children. When she arrives, full of excitement and romance about her new home, Diouanne is quickly struck with the reality of her new station in life. She is a white woman's servant. Feelings of mutual animosity rise between the two women expressed in the white woman's outward attitude toward the help, as it were, while Diouanne keeps her mouth closed and seathes from the inside. Eventually, enough becomes enough and Diouanne decides that she will be no one's slave and takes a final drastic measure to ensure that she never will be again.

The final images of Black Girl are what have stayed with me. The white woman's husband who has traveled back to Senegal in order to settle matters with the young woman's family attempts to pay for the life of Diouanne who had taken her own life in the man's bathtub. Bringing with him the woman's wages and a traditional mask (given to her by her mother upon leaving for France), he attempts to atone for the sins of him and his wife. The mother refuses the money, turning away in disgust. A little boy retrieves the mask and places the grotesque visage upon his own. As the man walks away in confusion the little boy follows Diouanne's former employer as if the spirit of her ancesters were haunting his every ignorant step. He looks back, unable to shake the image from his past. At last, he gets in his car and drives away without ever confronting his own prejudice, no matter how begnine it may have appeared against his wife's overt disgust with this woman who was, in her eyes clearly beneath her.