The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968) - Melvin Van Peebles

​Employing a playful formal style that utilizes a lot of familiar sensibilities and techniques popularized by and associated with the French New Wave, The Story of Three-Day Pass is an understated yet piercing study of racial imbalance, one which keenly elucidates the psychological toll of exile and alienation through an idyllic boy meet girl narrative framework. The pernicious yet not always overt racism is wonderfully captured, the promise of potential romance feels real yet never assured, and in the film's denouement, the harsh realities of romanticism give way to the pervasive realities of racism. The Story of a Three- Day Pass isn't polemic in its study of racism, it simply exhibits the facade of acceptability which the black man is confronted with. Allowance is granted by those who accept obedience and subjugation to the will of the racial majority. They have utility within this expectation, yet they will never be viewed as anything beyond that due to the white majority's unwillingness to see them as equal, autonomous human beings.