When Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song came out in 1971, nothing like it had appeared on an American movie screen before. The depiction of a Watts-based male hustler's act of rebellion against the brutal police and his subsequent flight to freedom "was an important moment in the evolution of black cinema which involved redefinition and initial statement of a willingness to act against one's fate in America," according to veteran black filmmaker St. Clair Bourne. Film historian Gladstone Yearwood has written that Sweetback "stands as a milestone in contemporary black cinema because of its popular impact, its example of economic independence, its fine use of cinematic language and its creative incorporation of the Afro-American expressive tradition." Risking his directing fee from the politically correct civil rights-era comedy Watermelon Man and $50,000 borrowed from that remarkably open-minded capitalist Bill Cosby, Van Peebles made a film that both challenged the industry and foreshadowed the ongoing conflicts between street culture and mainstream taste. After a Boston theater cut out nine minutes of the film and the Motion Picture Association of America gave it an X rating, Van Peebles pronounced: "Should the rest of the community submit to your censorship that is its business, but White standards shall no longer be imposed on the Black community."

Sweetback initially opened in only two theaters--one in Atlanta and a Detroit venue that specialized in zombie triple features--and never received a national distribution worthy of its controversy. Yet Sweetback's ghettocentric style, outsider perspective, and financially independent spirit still reverberate in two crucial African-American artistic movements--hip hop and black film. Sweetback defied the positive-image canon of Sidney Poitier, dealing openly with black sexuality, government-sanctioned brutality, and the arbitrary violence of inner city life. Its refusal to compromise a black view still resonates in black artists from Ice Cube to Spike Lee.

At a 1980 colloquy on the film, Van Peebles explained his narrative strategy: "The reality is that our people have been brainwashed with the 'hip' music, the beautiful color, and the dancing images flickering across the screen. This is what they know as cinema. And that's where we must begin. We obviously cannot dwell there; but it's a point of departure. That's what revolution is! It isn't everybody standing up here on an intellectual high. And it is not meeting people and starting from where they are not. It is starting from where they can see."

With a change here and there, Van Peebles' rap could be the spiel of a hard-core hip hopper in The Source talking about his rhymes and videos, though what the rap generation owes Sweetback has been absorbed through the blaxploitation films that Sweetback spawned.

Watching the film now, more than twenty-five years since its original release, you'll notice that Van Peebles, who lived and studied in France for many years, was clearly influenced by that country's New Wave cinema in his narrative and editing style. Now-out-of-favor techniques, such as the split screen, are extensively and effectively utilized by Van Peebles, especially in the film's second half. Overall this work feels much more experimental now than it did in the '70s, when the focus was put on its political message and Van Peebles' struggle to get it made. As an important piece of American independent filmmaking, a distinctive work of African-American art, and a reaction to the political turmoil of the early '70s, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song deserves to endure.
--Nelson George

Cast

Melvin Van Peebles (Sweetback)
with
John Amos
Simon Chuckster
John Dullaghan
Rhetta Hughes
Hubert Scales
and Brer Soul and the Black Community

Credits

Written, composed, produced, directed, and edited by: Melvin Van Peebles
Cinematography by: Robert Maxwell
Music played by: Earth, Wind and Fire
Makeup: Bob and Nora Maxwell

About the transfer

Sweet Sweetback's Baaddasssss Song is presented its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This new digital transfer was fully supervised by Melvin Van Peebles from the 35mm internegative. The sound was mastered from a 35mm optical track print, which was the best remaining audio elements for this film. The trailer was transferred from a 35mm print.