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 revolution he would let loose just a few years later.
Streaming Options
Release Information:
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- Introduction by director Melvin Van Peebles from 1997
- New conversation between producer and Black Filmmaker Foundation founder Warrington Hudlin and filmmaker and music historian Nelson George
- Interview from 1968 with Melvin Van Peebles from the television program Black Journal
- Episode of the French television program Pour le plaisir from 1968, featuring on-set interviews with Mario Van Peebles and actors Harry Baird and Nicole Berger
- Three short films by Van Peebles: Sunlight (1957), Three Pickup Men for Herrick (1957), and Les cinq cent balles (1961)
- Trailer