The Criterion Collection prides itself on curating fantastic classic cinephile-friendly films that may have gone under-the-radar in the home release market and their upcoming Blu-Ray release won’t be any different. Criterion has announced that they’ll be putting together an essential collection of Melvin Van Peebles movies with their latest offering, “Melvin Van Peebles: Four Films” set to be released on September 28.
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A one-man creative maverick and revolutionary, who wrote, directed, starred in, and composed the music for many of his works, Melvin Van Peebles was a shock to the system of American Independent cinema. His stylistically explosive films were raw, visceral, and gave an emerging Black consciousness unfiltered expression in the 1960s and 1970s. Though Peebles changed the game of cinema with the seminal pop-culture bombshell of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” that rebellious landmark is just one piece of a an extraordinary career.
Having a strong independent voice in American filmmaking helped open many doors for fellow black filmmakers trying to make a bigger splash in the industry, and others inspired by his work like his own son Mario Van Peebles, a writer, director and actor in his own right.
Highlighting the career of this traiblazing filmmaker/actor, the five-disc set features four films from Van Peebles such as the recently re-released “The Story of A Three Day Pass,” “Watermelon Man,” “Don’t Play Us Cheap,” and the aforementioned “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.” The aforementioned Mario made a film about his father, “Baadasssss!,” which is also part of the collection.
“The Story of A Three Day Pass,” Melvin’s first feature made in France focuses on Harry Baird‘s Turner, 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.
“Watermelon Man,” stars comedian Godfrey Cambridge in a virtuoso performance (initially in whiteface) as Jeff Gerber, a loudmouthed, bigoted white insurance salesman whose sitcomlike suburban existence is jarringly upended when he wakes up to discover, in a wild spin on Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” that he has become a black man. What ensues is a ferocious satire of society’s racist double standards that gradually transforms into an empowering portrait of awakening Black consciousness, executed with a mix of acerbic irreverence and deadly serious political commentary by a relentlessly subversive Van Peebles.
With “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” Van Peebles created the prototype for what Hollywood would eventually co-opt and make into the blaxploitation hero: a taciturn, perpetually blank-faced performer in a sex show, who, when he’s pushed too far by a pair of racist cops looking to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit, goes on the run through a lawless underground of bikers, revolutionaries, sex workers, and hippies in a kill-or-be-killed quest for liberation from white oppression. It’s considered a landmark in black filmmaking.
“Don’t Play Us Cheap,” has a cast of black stage and screen luminaries including Esther Rolle, Mabel King, and Avon Long stars in this charmingly offbeat, fablelike fantasy in which a pair of mischief-making devil-bats dispatched by Satan assume human form in order to wreak havoc on a Saturday-night house party in Harlem—only to find their diabolical plan thwarted by their hosts’ infectious generosity of spirit. Staged with ebullience, the original blues- and gospel-infused songs by Van Peebles burst forth in a life-affirming celebration of Black joy, tenderness, resilience, and strength. Given the social media criticism that the Criterion didn’t have enough black films in its collection, it seems the company is responding and taking steps in the right direction. Check out some trailers for the films below, and get ready to save your pennies now for September 28.