Legendary Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène’s 1968 second feature film—following his acclaimed 1966 debut Black Girl—serves up Brechtian satirical comedy with a social and political bite. Mandabi (The Money Order), based on Sembène’s own novella, follows the misfortunes of Ibrahima Dieng (Makuredia Guey), who lives in a shantytown in Dakar with his two wives, seven children, and a mountain of debt.
Jobless in a postcolonial world in which French masters have been replaced by casually corrupt local officials, Dieng is still a proud man who struggles to keep up appearances while seemingly lording it over his spouses (in reality, the women are in charge of day to day living). Dieng’s life is upended by the arrival of a money order for 25,000 francs from a nephew working in Paris as a street sweeper. An accompanying letter specifies that most of the money is to be banked for the nephew’s return, with some given to Dieng’s sister, and 2,000 for Dieng himself. Since the family is illiterate, no one knows what the money order is really worth, but speculation travels very quickly and neighbors soon begin to ask Dieng for loans.
The easygoing Dieng assents to sharing his new wealth as soon as he can get the money order cashed. And that apparently simple objective sets in motion a frustrating odyssey in which Dieng faces bureaucratic obstacles at every turn, beginning with the insistence that he must have an identity card before the money order will be accepted. Dieng will subsequently be shuttled from the post office to the police station to city hall, marked as a naïve rube by thieves—both administrative and private citizens—as he tries to obtain a photo and birth certificate. Sembène’s overarching theme about the problems faced by newly independent Africans in a transitional society is serious, but the comic touches make the message more resonant. In one scene, Dieng bemoans Senegal’s fate to the postman, complaining that “decency has become a sin in this country,” only to be interrupted by the call of a peddler—“bras for sale”—who carries women’s lingerie hanging from a pole across his shoulder. Capitalism has come to town and the bare necessities will no longer suffice, even for the impoverished.
Presented with a beautiful 4K digital restoration (highlighting the vibrantly colored local dress), Mandabi features extras including an introduction by film scholar Aboubakar Sanogo, a conversation from 2020 with author and screenwriter Boubacar Boris Diop and sociologist and feminist activist Marie Angélique Savané, “Praise Song” (a new featurette about Sembène), Sembène’s 1970 short film Tauw, a leaflet with an essay by critic and scholar Tiana Reid and excerpts from a 1969 interview with Sembène, and a booklet with Sembène’s original novella The Money Order. Recommended. (R. Pitman)