Black Girl (1966) Makes a Great Case for Normalizing the Medium Runtime

Every February in recent memory, I’ve loved seeing the film world lift up the work of Black directors, writers, and performers. It’s always a great excuse to catch up on my cinematic blindspots and find new films to add to the watchlist.

I have to give credit to the Letterboxd social media team this time around. Last week, they posted a graphic highlighting the top narrative feature films by Black directors. Given that statistics like these are crowdsourced from the user base rather than critically curated in any way, it’s a list that raises a few eyebrows. I happen to love the Spider-Verse films, but it’s a real sign of the times to see both films occupying the top two slots. The rest of the top 10 is mostly predictable, even if the recognition is deserved: a couple of Spike Lee joints, a couple of Steve McQueen films, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele.*

But the film that barely snuck onto the list is the one that caught my attention. I don’t claim to be a “cinephile” the way some of my more educated film-loving friends are, so I wasn’t aware of Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl or its reputation as the first Sub-Saharan African feature film to break through on an international level. I was already intrigued—and then I saw the one-hour runtime.** Music to my ears, folks.

Make no mistake: The short runtime doesn’t make Black Girl any less impactful. Diouana, the titular protagonist, is given a complete character arc, and there’s plenty to unpack from the margins. Sembéne also wasn’t held back by what I assume had to be a very small budget; there are long stretches of the film where the only thing you hear are the score (which is almost constant throughout) and a voiceover from Diouana’s perspective.*** Perhaps that was partially a creative decision on Sembène’s part, but those scenes certainly benefited from not having to capture sound on location.

I think Black Girl is quite good. It’s a thematically rich portrait of a Senegalese woman who moves to France in a search of fulfillment in her work and acceptance in her new country but finds little more than servitude and scorn. I lack the necessary perspective for a deeper dive into the film’s layers, though many great writers have done just that.**** Here’s what I can tell you, though: It’s time to bring back short features like this one.

Reader, we’re living in a time of fractured presentation when it comes to cinema. Some of the best new films don’t get a theatrical release. Some of the best new stories come from television and miniseries. Feature films are getting longer and longer—sometimes for a good reason, sometimes not. Why can’t we let them be shorter as well?

With the Oscars coming up in less than a month, let’s look at the Academy’s dividing line between feature films and short films: Anything 40 minutes or less, including credits, is considered a short film. This dates back more than a century when anything that could be projected on one or two 35mm reels was deemed a “short subject.” This also explains why so many Oscar-nominated short films are 39 minutes. (Looking at you, Wes Anderson.)

Lots of my friends have made short films. I’ve even made a couple myself. In my semi-professional opinion, 40 minutes is too long to be considered “short.” If a filmmaker has the resources to make a 39-minute film, I think they’ve outgrown the short film medium. That’s why I’d love to see short films narrowed down to 30 minutes or less. Then we could embrace a new category for films in the 31-75 minute range.

The thing is, these films have always existed in some form. Those one-to-two-reel short films that used to be projected in the theaters of yore? If you increased that number to three or four reels, you had a “featurette,” a term that I would love to see the film world reclaim after the last few generations learned to associate it with DVD bonus features.

Some classic films would fit into this new division. Two of my favorite Universal horror films—Frankenstein and The Invisible Man—are only 71 minutes each. Some of the classic monster movies that came later are even shorter. And there are some modern examples as well if you look hard enough. Marvel Studios has dropped featurettes like Werewolf By Night and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special straight to Disney+. And you’ll find them on the festival circuit too; my favorite film of 2020, Taipei Suicide Story, is only 45 minutes.

But the purpose of this reevaluation wouldn’t be to redefine the first century and a half of cinema by new terminology. I believe it would open doors for filmmakers who are ready to aim higher than a short film but aren’t quite comfortable with an entire feature yet. Black Girl wasn’t well received by American critics at the time of its release, and I can’t help but think the short runtime didn’t work in its favor.*****

Sembène’s film has stood the test of time, gaining a positive critical reappraisal thanks in part to its inclusion in the Criterion Collection. Imagine if it could inform the future of cinema as much as it helps us understand the past.

*I haven’t seen it myself, but Who Killed Captain Alex? is a welcome outlier in the list. Shot in Uganda for less than $200 (yes, two hundred dollars), it’s the crown jewel of the Wakaliwood wave of no-budget action films. I’m told it’s truly something to behold. (Maybe that’ll be next on my watchlist.)

**There appears to be a discrepancy on the runtime. IMDb has it listed as 65 minutes. Wikipedia has it listed as 55 minutes. And Letterboxd has it listed as 60 minutes, which is the same runtime listed on both Max and the Criterion Channel. So that’s what we’ll go with here.

***I am often allergic to voiceovers, but I can dig it when there’s a good reason for it. It’s a useful tool to firmly ground the viewer in the protagonist’s point of view, and I absolutely don’t blame Sembène for choosing a device that allowed him to shoot on the cheap.

****I would suggest starting with Ashley Clark’s essay for the Criterion Collection’s physical release.

*****Yes, I can think of some other reasons why American journalists in the 1960s wouldn’t have enjoyed this film. But that’s for another discussion.

Black Girl is now streaming on Max, the Criterion Channel, and Watch TCM, and it is available to rent elsewhere.