Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song

Director: Melvin van Peebles
Screenplay: Melvin van Peebles
Minutes: 97
Year: 1971
Score: 7.80
Release: Vinegar Syndrome

I hopped on Twitter before I started writing this to ask my friend Damien if he has an opinion of the film, when I swiped over the search I saw an article that the rapper T.I. was arrested for entering his own gated community and that told me of everything I needed to know.

From VinegarSyndrome.com:

Considered to be among the most significant features ever directed by a black filmmaker and included in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, SWEET SWEETBACK is a brutal and shocking story of survival and is credited as the first ‘blaxploitation’ film ever made. Featuring a rousing score from a nascent Earth, Wind, & Fire as well as surrealist tinged visuals from cinematographer Robert Maxwell, Van Peebles creates an unforgettable and immersive study of perseverance in the face of racism. Vinegar Syndrome proudly brings this landmark film to Blu-ray, newly restored in 4K from its original 35mm camera negative.

Melvin Van Peebles made a very successful film called Watermelon Man and Columbia Pictures offered him a three picture deal. To hear Van Peebles tell it he turned it down because he didn’t want to be beholden to another studio to make a film that would be comfortable for a white audience. Instead he decided to self finance and make the movie that he wanted to make. It opens with a prologue which tells the viewer that they about to see something different, “…Sire, these lines are not a homage to brutality that the artist has invented, but a hymn from the mouth of reality…” The first starring credit is “THE BLACK COMMUNITY.”

Throughout the film Van Peebles has a dead look in his eyes, before the inciting incident he works as a sex worker with no appearance of self worth who quickly becomes a fugitive where he knows that he is going to die. He ends up using the only currency he has, his sex, to help him while he is on the run. In an interview, Van Peebles says he sat near a elderly woman in one of the first screenings and she muttered that she wished Sweetback would die in the desert rather than being gunned down by the police. It is horrible to know that the movie could be made today and have the exact same effect.

In a way, the movie kind of reminds me of Breathless. Whereas Breathless is about a white criminal who kills a cop for catching him in the commission of a crime it turns into a weird romantic comedy with a twist ending. Sweetback is about a black man who is tired of watching fellow black men brutalized by the police that he lashes out and has the entire police force chasing him, keeping him on the run through the entire film. Both use jump cuts, one does them to the extreme.

I don’t think it would be too far fetched to suggest that the film is one of the more important releases in film history. Sweetback was not the first black film by a black filmmaker. But, what it is broke a new barrier that most people didn’t know was present. It was Sweetback, according the Van Peebles in one of the great special features, that proved to Hollywood that a black man could lead a film and sell out a theater, that a black man does not have to be a sidekick, nor does their ending have to be assumed. The film started a new genre and likely is the inspiration launching the careers of many modern black filmmakers.

This film could have, easily, been released by The Criterion Collection, there is no difference in the quality of this physical release just because there is no C on the cover. This Vinegar Syndrome release is a bit nicer than some recent CC releases. It is packed to the gills with special features which could qualify as “exploitation film school in a box”; a delightfully slipcased box. The new 4k restoration is not perfect, nor should it be, there is a disclaimer at the top explaining some of the difficulties VS had in the restoration, but it looks great and with some of the stylistic choices Van Peebles made throughout the film any of the deficiencies fit right in. On top of the beautiful transfer the audio is amazing with it’s amazing score by, then up-and-comer, Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Do not sleep on this release. It is worth every penny. 

Special Features:

• Region free Blu-ray/DVD combo
• Newly scanned and restored in 4k from 35mm original camera negative
• Career interview with Melvin Van Peebles, courtesy of Olumide Productions
• “One Baadasssss Woman!” – an interview with Niva Ruschell (actress)
• Extensive Q&A from the 2013 Black Panther Film Festival at the Maysles Center in Harlem
• “The Real Deal (What it was…is!)” – archival ‘making of’ doc by Melvin Van Peebles
• Historical commentary track with Sergio Mims (assistant director of PENITENTIARY)
• Archival still gallery
• Trailers for: SWEET SWEETBACK, STORY OF A THREE-DAY PASS & DON’T PLAY US CHEAP
• Extensive booklet essay by Travis Crawford
• Limited edition slipcover designed by Earl Kessler Jr. (2,000 units)
• Reversible cover
• English SDH subtitles

Director: 10 – Cinematography: 7 – Edit: 8 – Parity: 10 – Main performance: 7 – Else performance: 2 – Score: 10 – Sound: 6 – Story: 9 – Script: 8 – Effects: 7 – Design: 6 – Costumes: 7 – Keeps interest: 10 – Lasting: 10