Melvin Van Peebles’s edgy, angsty, romantic first feature could never have been made in America. Unable to break into a 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 his stylistically innovative feature debut. The Story of a Three Day Pass follows an African American soldier station in Europe who encounters racism from his superiors following his idyllic 3-day affair with a young, white, French woman.

“A kind of gentle cross between ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ and ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’-a little hard to imagine, it is true, but less pretentious than the first and less false than the second.” – Renata Adler, The New York Times