The Story of a Three Day Pass All events are subject to change due to weather or other concerns. Please check with the venue or organization to ensure an event is taking place as scheduled.
Photo courtesy of Houston Cinema Arts Society Houston Cinema Arts Society and MFAH Virtual Cinemas will present a week long virtual run of Melvin Van Peebles s classic directorial debut,
The Story of a Three Day Pass. Van Peebles’ edgy, angsty, romantic first feature could never have been made in America. Unable to break into a segregated Hollywood, Van Peebles decamped to France, taught himself the language, and wrote a number of books in French, one of which,
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 France, taught himself the language, and wrote a number of books in French, one of which, La permission, would become the 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 rev
Tweet Share
After World War II, as countries that were once occupied by the Nazis opened up to American influence, French movie theaters were flooded with Hollywood movies they hadnât been able to see during the war. This attempt at a kind of cultural imperialism had an unintended consequence: French filmmakers were singularly taken with the B-movie marginalia of American cinema, absorbing forgotten Westerns and hard-boiled detective pictures that would eventually inspire the French New Waveâs riffs on codified and recognizable movie genres.Â
The rest is, of course, history: A generation of passionate young cinephiles like Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer and Rivette became influential filmmakers, completely changing the landscape of European cinema. Just as American films had altered the perspective of French filmgoers, the works of these directors and their counterparts from Italy, Germany and other European nations would find their way to the United States,
Melvin Van Peebles’s Declaration of Independence Armond White
The final shot of Melvin Van Peebles’s 1968 debut film,
Story of a Three-Day Pass, celebrates FREEDOM. Turner (Harry Baird), a black GI stationed in France, had spent a weekend holiday with a white Frenchwoman, Miriam (Nicole Berger), enjoying all the imaginable pleasures a red-blooded American male could want. Now, after some minor social and personal roadblocks, the girl is gone as Smokey Robinson sang. Left in a familiar, conflicted, patriotic place, he flops onto his barracks cot with a sense of relief. The pressure is off, momentarily.
That freeze-frame image, reminiscent of Francois Truffaut’s French New Wave breakthrough
The Film That Made âSweet Sweetbackâs Baadasssss Songâ Possible
Melvin Van Peebles had to go to France to make âThe Story of a Three Day Pass,â the tale of a Black soldier on leave thatâs full of bold directorial choices.
Nicole Berger and Harry Baird in Melvin Van Peebles’s debut feature.Credit.Sigma III Corporation
By Nicolas Rapold
May 6, 2021
I donât think anyone who sees the title âSweet Sweetbackâs Baadasssss Songâ forgets it. The eye-popping film made Melvin Van Peebles a pioneer of 1970s American cinema and pure independent hustle. But a few years earlier, Van Peebles directed his first trailblazer in France: âThe Story of a Three Day Pass,â his feature debut, which was released commercially in 1968 and is opening at Film Forum on Friday in a new restoration.