Sweet Sweetback\' S Baadasssss Song

Before starting a cinematographic study of work, it is important of in repréciser briefly the context historique.
The film is shown for the first time at the public in 1971, time marked with the the United States by the end of the Guerre of Vietnam.
Martin Luther King died. Woodstock announces the emergence of the psychedelic culture and the burs police multiplient.
It is in America with the exacerbated Racisme and violent one that the persons in charge of the studios Hollywood iens decide to take a symbolic system measure by opening their doors with three realizers black-American, with the idea to close again it at once after them. Thus Gordons Park ( the hill of the brackets then Shaft ), Michael Schultz ( Because Wash ) and Melvin Van Peebles for Watermelon Man are the three only ones to benefit from this opportunity.

Sweet Sweetback' S Baad Asssss Song , at its exit, makes the effect of a blow thunder in it country where few films can claim to have changed at the same time the cinema and the life. Melvin Van Peebles succeeded in combining in this film cinematographic, political language. It controlled this feature-length film from one end to another of the line production and diffusion. Sweetback , the hero is at the beginning small a gigolo which animates pornographic shows in a closed house. Its procurer rents it with the police force to carry out a false witness. During the way, the policemen fall on a demonstration pro-black and stop one of the leaders of the movement. Whereas they are becoming to tobacco the young revolutionist, Sweetback leaves its dumbness and kills these police officers.

The film then takes another turning, our hero took a great step to leave this immense spiral of passivity. The continuation of the évéments is summarized rather well by the expression “Running Movie”, where Sweetback is in mare and tries to escape this interminable tracking. It will pass in multiple ghettos before reaching the Mexican border. The film presents a multitude of cyclic elements to us, assembly with the set of themes, in which Sweetback passes and seems to be released.

From a technical point of view, Melvin Van Peebles uses nonconventional framings with an assembly psychedelic inherited pornographic films of the time (multicoloured textures, over-exposed film). It besides will borrow name “classified X” to enjoy a greater freedom of turning. Its film is thus carried out apart from any trade union. The financing is carried out to him also adventurous manner. Thanks to the benefit of Watermelon Man and 50.000 $ borrowed from Bill Cosby, to which various money arrivals are added during turning, the film enjoys a total budget of 100  000 $ for a final receipt of 10 M$. It is an enormous financial success which will not remain a long time unexploited by the large firms of the cinema (it is Shaft besides which will save MGM bankruptcy). Melvin Van Peebles orchestra learnedly the publicity of its film by using a method far from used at the time, that of the original soundtrack. It for that called upon the group of music “Earth, Wind and Fire” still largely unknown, thus creating alliance between music and cinema blacks. They will give a few months later the historical bands sounds of Isaac Hayes for Shaft , Curtis Mayfield with Superfly , or Willie Hutch and The Mack.

Sweet Sweetback' S Baad Asssss Song is a human, political and financial great adventure. It will durably mark mentalities and not only those of the populations black, as some thought. This film is not to in no case a dogmatic vision and Black Panther, it gives simply an account in manner poetic, the situation of the Seventies with the the United States.

Data sheet

See too

  • List of nonpornographic films containing not simulated sex acts

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