Ghali: El Hadj, the main character, has two wives who seem to belong to two poles: the first is traditional and the other is Europeanized.

Sembène: He got his first wife before becoming a somebody. Along with his economic and social development, he takes on a second who corresponds, so to speak, to a second historical phase. The third, his daughter’s age but without her mind, is only there for self esteem. She is submissive (unlike his daughter), and only appears once or twice: she is of the “Be beautiful and shut up” variety.

Polygamy, especially in the bourgeois or urban setting, means the wife is only some flesh for whom a commodity value is paid. It is these bourgeois and their wives, by the way, who had this supposedly brilliant idea to open the doors for International Women’s Year. Not working women, but a stratum of privileged women to whom the Christian religion has given no satisfaction and who talk on the subject of men’s and women’s equality. But there is, undoubtedly, an undeniable problem: polygamy, against which we struggle. There is a problem, but the problem is clear because the woman’s inferior status is visible. We do not, however, find any solution in the Western concept of family, for that model only produces a deterioration of human beings. In reality, the problem should not be posed in terms of sexes but in terms of classes.

[From Film and Politics in the Third World, edited by John D.H. Downing (New York: Praeger, 1987). Translated by John D.H. Downing. First Published in Cinéma 76, #208 (April 1976).]

[ “International Women’s Year (IWY) was the name given to 1975 by the United Nations.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Year ]