Last night I got a chance to watch a 35mm print of Melvin van Peebles 'story of a 3 day pass' and damn, was I pleasantly surprised. van Peebles, who is known for his blaxploitation classics 'Sweet sweetback's baadasssss song' and 'watermelon man' has always left me slightly conflicted. The screening last night really brought to my attention those elements of van Peeble's work that I find both problematic and intriguing. van Peebles began making movies in the early 1950's and refers to himself as self-taught. Sweetback is an important but difficult movie, and most of van Peebles work exhibits some lack of technical expertise and fluency in the grammar of cinema. However, sweetback was, essentially, a work of outsider art. But in this case, the outsiders were a huge demographic of American film viewers that hollywood had seriously underestimated, and this indie film's world left white viewers outside. The political atmosphere of Hollywood at the time created a double split; on the one hand, van Peebles is excluded from the world of Hollywood because of his culture, allowing him little access to traditional Hollywood techniques and resources. On the other hand, this makes it so that the viewer is excluded from the world of the film unless they are a part of that culture. In this way representation of black identity and by default the identity of the film maker(who was also the star) become the most powerful elements in the film. The story is disjointed, the pacing drags painfully, moments of false bravado and posing make us wince a little, but we all know that this movie is something special. Before making sweetback, van Peebles lived and worked in Europe, where he experienced less discrimination and was given a grant by the French government to turn a novel he had written into a film. With that grant he made 'The story of a three-day pass,' which he then screened in San Francisco as a foreign film, gaining entry into Hollywood. The film exhibits the same clumsy pacing and naive use of images and editing present in sweetback, and also betrays van Peebles tendency to write from his own experience. This film is of particular interest to me because it explores quite articulately a deep rooted fantasy of the writer/director: to sleep with a white woman. This is a recurring theme in van Peebles work and at first it didn't interest me, perhaps because it was something so far from my own experience that I had no access to it. This film makes the issue tangible and touching, and the end result is a warm, human piece. A black american soldier gets promoted and is granted a three day pass, and goes to Paris to celebrate. He meets a young french woman at a bar, and the rest of the film is a short, sweet love story. The real strengths of the film come from stylized, theatrical performances that stretch and strengthen crucial moments in the film, and fantasy sequences that reveal the true mindsets and intentions of the characters. Particularly fantastic moments include an overhead shot, in which the white girl and the black soldier act out an awkward dance around the bed, before finally kissing. This was followed by the sex scene, which was interrupted by the fantasies of both parties: his, of riding up to a castle in tights and feathered hat to meet a princess, and hers a quasi-rape fantasy about being captured and carried off by African tribesmen in elaborate dress. I like to interpret this fantasy as an innocent one, in which the girl betrays her excitement about sleeping with someone so exotic, much like his; it is portrayed warmly and not in a negative light. While touching on such weighty subject matter, the film remains light-hearted and playful, and much more elegantly conceived and executed than some of his later works.
Availability: actually, available for rental through netflix, although I don't know how similar the DVD version is to the print I saw.
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3 comments:
SWEETBACK is one of several films that I keep thinking about watching but never get around to it.
I think my biggest interest in it is curiosity. I can't remember where i first learned of it, maybe saw a video in a rental place? I think it had quotes from some African-American celebrities, like Bill Cosby, and that made me more curious.
And the title is so weird, unique!
Even though I haven't seen either of the two films you mentioned in the post, I really enjoyed reading what you had to say about them.
Your description of the sequence in THREE-DAY PASS where the soldier and woman sleep together was particularly interesting.
I like that you made a point of saying that you interpreted the woman's rape fantasy as "innocent," which sounds right.
It sounds like a very personal film for van Peebles, which is what attracts me to it.
Re: Your comment:
"While touching on such weighty subject matter, the film remains light-hearted and playful, and much more elegantly conceived and executed than some of his later works."
I wonder if that's not only a combination of his technical skills but also a consequence of working for Hollywood. I wonder what kind of films he would have made if he continued to work in Europe.
When I said that the film betrayed his tendency to write from his own experience I should have mentioned that prior to making the film he had married a white woman he met while in the military overseas, and obviously his experiences as a black man in Paris at that time period contributed to his worldview as seen in the film. Some of the lessons he learned from the french new wave making this film in Paris in the 60's did carry over to his later works, such as jump cutting and fantasy/dream sequences. Certain other elements that are characteristic of his film making are unique and remind me a little of techniques used in anime, although they probably have their roots in the theater. These elements include exagerated poses and gestures, freezing on a key frame to emphasize it's significance, and a sort of narration in the form of Turner's(the soldier's) internal monologue. Sweetback retained many of the elements van Peebles took away from studying french new wave films, but suffered from a serious lack of funding, and as a result the cinematography and editing suffered. van Peebles was forced to play the star and perform his own stunts. As a humerous aside, van Peebles contracted ghonorea during one of the sex scenes, and applied to the directors guild for compensation for being injured on the job. He used the money to buy more film. Bottom line, he was a great film maker because he had drive, and because he knew exactly what he wanted and made it happen. The strength of his ideas and his resolve are at the heart of all his movies.
Great thoughts on Melvin's films. He is a very interesting character. I you are interested in learning more about Melvin Van Peebles you should check out How To Eat Your Watermelon In White Company (and Enjoy It), a feature length documentary on Melvin Van Peebles that came out this year. The film is great and got excellent reviews. Melvin was not only a film maker, but also an author, a Broadway play write and a musician. It is premiering on the IFC channel on Feb. 15 at 9 p.m. E.T.
How To Eat Your Watermelon… Home Page
How to Eat You Watermelon... also has an outstanding web site that has the trailer for the film and a lot of Melvin's videos and music. I am a big blaxploitation fan so I love all this stuff.
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