Black History Month: The Story of a Three Day Pass

THE STORY OF A THREE DAY PASS
Written and Directed by Melvin Van Peebles, based on his novel
Starring Harry Baird and Nicole Berger
France, 1967

As long as I’ve been interested in movies, I’ve always known of Melvin Van Peebles, but I’ve been slow to get into his movies. I usually saw his name in connection to his most famous film, SWEET SWEETBACK’s BAADASSSSS SONG, an inspiring title to match a VHS box with an equally inspiring cover, that I almost rented over and over again throughout my teens. I never quite got around to it, despite looking into the genre of Blaxploitation, and reading that Van Peebles basically invented it.

Anyway, I finally got around to checking out his career, and started with his first feature, made in France, based on his own novel – THE STORY OF A THREE DAY PASS.

This story follows a Black American army soldier who has just received both a promotion and a three-day pass to take leave. He vacations in Paris and meets a white French girl who joins him on a trip to the beach. They fall in and out of love (and in and out of bed), the action punctuated with a couple racist run ins, and the soldier’s conflicted conversations with his own reflection in the mirror.

Shot in black and white with plenty of creative editing, this movie fits right in to the French new wave and actually executes some of the movement’s tricks better than the avowed masters do. I was actually reflecting on this after watching the film, wondering why some of the more famous French new wave flicks strike me as immature and self indulgent while this one didn’t, and the only thing I could come up with was that this was at least an outsider voice with something interesting to say. So, it wasn’t all style, no substance. It was style and substance, which is a nice change of pace.

Early on in the film, I noticed a great shot of Van Peebles’ main character seemingly floating through a nightclub crowd, toward the camera, as if pulled toward his destiny. It looked super modern and incredibly familiar all at the same time, because it is the signature shot that has become synonymous with the films of Spike Lee. Little did I know, Van Peebles did it first, and I’m sure Spike Lee would be the first to say so.