Melvin Van Peebles essential films. Sunlight (Motion picture) Three pickup men for Harrick (Motion picture) Cinq cent balles (Motion picture)
Notes:
Harry Baird, Nicole Berger, Karell Jonathan Berr, George Birt, Jon Carlson, Christian Marin, Pierre Doris. Title and credits from screen. Based on Melvin Van Peebles' novel Story of a three day pass (La permission). Originally released as a motion picture in 1967. Wide screen. A 4K digital restoration made in consultation with Mario Van Peebles. Released as part of the five-disc Blu-ray boxed set Melvin Van Peebles essential films. Special features: Introduction by Melvin Van Peebles from 1997; episode from the French television show Pour le plaisir from 1968, featuring on-set interviews with Van Peeples and actors Harry Baird and Nicole Berger; interview from 1968 with Van Peebles from the television program Black Journal; new conversation between producer and Black Filmmaker Foundation founder Warrington Hudlin and filmmaker and music historian Nelson George; three short films by Van Peebles: Sunlight (1957); Three pickup men for Harrick (1957); and Les cinq cent balles (1961); trailer.
Summary:
"Melvin Van Peebles's edgy, angsty, romantic first feature could never have been made in America. Unable to break into segregated Hollywood, Van Peebles decamped to Paris, taught himself French, and wrote a number of books in the language, one of which, La permission, grew out of the story for his stylistically innovative The Story of a Three Day Pass. Turner (Harry Baird), an African American soldier stationed in France, is granted a promotion and a three-day leave from base by his casually racist commanding officer and heads to Paris, where he finds whirlwind romance with a white woman (Nicole Berger)--but what happens to their love when his furlough is over? Channeling the brash exuberance of the French New Wave, Van Peebles creates an exploration of the psychology of an interracial relationship as well as a commentary on France's contradictory attitudes about race that is playful, sarcastic, and stingingly subversive by turns, and that laid the foundation for the scorched-earth cinematic revolution he would let loose just a few years later"--Container.
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