Black cinema finds its feet

To revisit La permission, the film in which Melvin Van Peebles found his voice as a director, is to take on the role of a gold prospector. As we watch, we plunge our hands into the muddy waters of the history of racism in North America and pull out, into the light of day, a small nugget of gold. The film is a cornerstone of Black cinema, being one of the first instances in which a director confronted us so clearly with the necessity of Black self-representation on film, rather than conforming to the frameworks imposed on him by a white-dominated system. Melvin was literally the can opener for much of the authentically and proudly Afro American cinema that followed. Names like Spike Lee, who we all know, owe a debt of gratitude to this man who created space for Blaxploitation, and who held up a mirror for Black cinema to study itself.

Indeed, it is no accident that one of the opening scenes of the film shows the protagonist talking to his own reflection. Turner, a Black American soldier stationed in France, has been given a three-day pass as a vote of confidence from his captain, and is about to leave for Paris. We sense in the director a growing desire for speaking the truth, for standing firm, and La permission is the moment he portrays, in black and white, the importance of a Black character taking on the role of protagonist with pride, nobility and distinction. The film advocates for equality in a way that goes far beyond the tentative assertion, regularly parroted, that everyone is human and therefore equal. Rather, it stylishly affirms the very cultural characteristics that society at large – and American cinema in particular – have always disparaged. Turner’s freedom lasts for three days, and Melvin also seems to be liberating himself in their telling, as he mixes humour, class, novelty, passion, irony and swing to an accompaniment of plenty of good music, as if leading us in a new and previously unscripted dance.

The film itself has exactly this kind of rhythm: a series of interlocking steps executed by the soldier and the reality he comes across, be it in the figure of the city of Paris or the woman he meets there. This latter character is Miriam, a shop assistant who he becomes smitten with at a bar. With every step taken there is a new discovery, a window that opens on to a much-desired fluidity. The disconnect between this desire, or fantasy, and the hard facts of life marks a complex starting point for anyone making cinema with a Black aesthetic. And it is from this same disconnect that emerges, perhaps paradoxically, an iconic scene that is memorable in the history of cinema, yet remains largely unknown to the majority of the public – since cinema, unlike Turner, has been slow to understand the importance of looking at itself in the mirror, without prejudice. Having just entered the aforementioned bar, the soldier, wearing a pair of dark glasses, levitates majestically through a crowd that parts before him and watches, almost frozen, as he stops in front of a seated woman. He asks her to dance, but she has the audacity to say no. Turner’s feet return to solid ground – but not just his feet: his sunglasses also fall from his face. It is in this moment that real life reveals itself to him. He can finally see clearly, no disguises. Truth is found and fate smiles. Melvin Van Peebles reminds us that there is no better route to self-affirmation than simply taking one step after another: his protagonist moves forward into his surroundings, and in so doing takes hold of them. And he does this with an almost puerile candour, such as in the opening dialogue between Turner and Miriam, with each asking things from the other now in French, now in English. But even therein lies the previously established lascivious request, as two tongues intertwine, moistening the flesh of the film in anticipation of what will come later: one of the first interracial sex scenes in the history of cinema, with two bodies of different shades joining together perfectly in a metaphor for a worldview that at the time was barely imagined, much less discussed.

The skin of the American soldier is an aesthetic and erotic device that Van Peebles uses to great effect and entirely without shame, albeit within the narrow boundaries imposed on him by the moral and racist codes of the time. This film was a ‘big bang’ for a kind of Black cinema that neither needs nor asks for permission to put its true self on display. And perhaps one of its great merits is how it imagined and achieved this change all while working within the system. (Though the film was in fact made in Paris and is clearly influenced by the Nouvelle Vague; it was only later that Hollywood opened its doors to the filmmaker). With only a small team and modest means, Melvin Van Peebles left an indelible mark on cinema using an active camera, playful editing, vibrant energy, intelligent humour, social awareness, non-conformity, narrative clarity and bags of style. As this film comes back into the spotlight, I hope that his place in the history of cinema is given the recognition that he so rightly deserves.