by A. Freedman, Staff Writer

Any story about the filmmaking renegades and rebels of the late 60's and early 70's that includes John Cassavetes or the New Hollywood ought to include Melvin Van Peebles. Fresh off the success of The Watermelon Man, he could have gone on to fulfill a contract with Columbia Pictures for another round of films, but opted instead to make an independent film that no studio would dare touch: 1971's Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song. Considered by many to be the first Blaxploitation film ever made, it was a watershed moment in cinema history, and–up to that point–the most financially successful independent film ever released. Looking back, as it is with so much of Black cinema, one is struck by what has changed and what has decidedly not changed.

Melvin plays the adult Sweetback, who works at a brothel in Los Angeles. He gets picked up by the LAPD- somewhat sold down the river by his boss as a way to keep heat off the business. On his way to the station, the police arrest a young Black Panther Party member named Mu Mu, putting him in the car with Sweetback. The cops pull over to do their cop thing–which involves beating Mu Mu. Cuffed to Mu Mu, Sweetback waits a few moments but decides he has had enough. He fights back and knocks the cops unconscious. Maybe they thought he would play ball with them or simply look out just for himself, but Sweetback can't take it anymore.

The rest of the film follows Sweetback running from spot to spot, fleeing the police, being aided along the way by school children, priests, and even some Hell's Angels bikers, on his way to freedom. It does not take long to get a sense that this is a Crucifixion story, with shades of Moses and Exodus as well. As the characters cruise nighttime downtown Los Angeles, neon church signs are reflected in the windshield: "Jesus Saves." Sweetback is our Jesus–or Moses–perhaps not the savior of the Black community, but still representative of their long battle with American institutions of white supremacy.

One cannot discuss the film without also commenting on the shocking opening ten minutes. A young, barely teenage Sweetback (played by Melvin's son, Mario) has his first sexual encounter in the brothel, where he is employed doing odd jobs. As he is working, a much older prostitute invites him into her room- where she provides him not only with a premature entry into the world of adult intimacy, but also his name- "Sweetback." One not only wonders about the (very) questionable manner in which it was filmed, but also about the filmmaker's narrative intent. Did he see this as a welcome initiation into manhood? A first sexual conquest that would set the stage for many later ones? Or did he see this as a traumatic event in the character's childhood (as it easily would be for any character)? Considering that Peebles never circles back to this moment, it seems safe to assume that he sees it as the former.

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As one gets swept up in the story and perhaps manages to shake off that initial discomfort, you notice the exciting filmmaking techniques at play, as "independent" feelings as it gets. With freeze frames, overlapping frames, psychedelic colors, and unsimulated stunts and sex scenes, there is something eye popping at every turn. Along with the fierce independent spirit comes the occasional moment of filmmaking ineptitude. Nighttime scenes are poorly lit to the point of being essentially pitch black, the acting is often quite bad, and some editing choices feel very fuck-it-let's-move-on. In a sense, it reminded me of the early films of John Waters, with loads of bizarre choices (we watch a man on a toilet fart, pee, and wipe himself, for some reason) that most respectable directors wouldn't even film, let alone leave in. It all results in the general ethos of the film: make a movie with your friends, film what you want, make what you want, and don't let "the man" keep you down. The spirit of the film is the very spirit of agency and resistance that Sweetback himself represents.

Most electric of all is the final third, a mostly wordless montage of Sweetback making his final push to the Mexican border, evading the police, their dogs, jumping off of bridges, seeking refuge in weird hippie gatherings in the woods–all while original music from a then-unknown Earth, Wind & Fire plays–and everyone in the community keeps it mum with the cops on his tail. This exciting portion of the film certainly calls to mind the style and mood of Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess, released two years later and almost certainly heavily influenced by this film. It walked so that Bill Gunn could run.

Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song has inspired everyone from Spike Lee to The Simpsons. When it came out, it seemed truly out of left field–an uncompromised story about Black liberation that no studio would touch. Fifty years later, the story of Fred Hampton has been turned into an Oscar-nominated film that will compete later this week at the 93rd Oscars: Judas And The Black Messiah. While so much in the film industry still needs changing, Melvin Van Peebles and his crew certainly took a big first step 50 years ago this spring.