Cast:
Harry Baird (Turner), Nicole Berger (Miriam), and Hal Brav (Turner's Captain) Written and Directed by Melvin Van Peebles (#1970 - Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and #2184 - Watermelon Man)
Review:
"I never did decide to become a director. That’s very flattering and nice, but I never decided to become a director. I just decided to show folks, especially minorities, like I saw them, not like they kept being shown around in cinema."
Melvin Van Peebles had made a handful of short films and looked for a job in Hollywood. He received a job offer as an Elevator operator or dancer. He elected to go to Amsterdam to study for a PHD in astronomy (as one does when having the GI Bill). But his films got shown in France (as aided by avantgarde ciné-club founder Amos Vogel) that had attracted curiosity. He moved to France and taught the language to himself. Evidently, he found that he could get a temporary director's card to bring one's work to the screen. He became a journalist and published his own novels before getting the director's card to bring one of his works to fruition with La Permission (which he wrote as a screen treatment and published as a novel before the film was released). He got enough funding by the French government and shot it in six weeks. The movie initially premiered at the San Francisco Film Festival (representing France) in October of 1967 before getting a release in later months. The film had a star-crossed starring duo. It was the last movie role of Berger, who had performed in film in her native France for a handful of years before suffering a tragic car accident that saw her die at the age of 32 in April of 1967. Baird (born in British Guiana and educated in Canada and Britian) had done a handful of movies and TV since the late 1950s but this was his one notable lead role prior to glaucoma sidelining him by the 1970s and his death in 2005 at the age of 73. The movie attracted attention in Hollywood (go figure) and from that Van Peebles got an offer to do Watermelon Man, and the rest is history.
It is a curious love story, mainly because it features flawed beings trying waywardly to cope with the idea of being with anyone. The nightclub sequence in which one gets to see quite the curious shot of our lead has to be seen to be believed in the apparent talent of its director, complete with expectation versus the actual reality. It isn't too far from a French New Wave movie when you get down to it. Baird and Berger are a curious pair to see play out, namely because they each have scenes where they are imagining the other in scenarios distinctly different from each other (one as an aristocrat and the other as a tribal man). The inner voice of Baird talks at times during the film about the conflict that arises with staying in the system (the military - incidentally, Van Peebles served in the Air Force) in the face of nagging difficulties. Berger is shaky in gracefulness that comes with one's own challenges in ambition versus reality, particularly since they only see Baird through a specific prism that can only be surprised at how Baird reacts to specific incidents because of his race (such as being called a certain phrase or being seen by his white comrades). Brav makes for an effective side presence in condescending authority when it comes to trust (imagine saying any of what is heard for a newly "promoted" person). Their double act together can only go so far in a time and place that still reminds them of who they are - one black, one white, complete with a varied understanding of oneself and the languages (you get both English and French). There is no hope of just having an easy out (nothing such as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, for example) within a movie that can be tender just as much as it can be subversive. As a whole, it shows the potential of its director in what one can accomplish with a cast and style all to oneself.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
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