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 Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song (1971) is a relentless and impassioned film that is vital in cultural history and was a turning point in the representation of an entire community.

 Melvin Van Peebles’ second film, Sweetback was instantly a huge success, earning about $15 million in the box office- 30 times the original $500,000 budget. Despite Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) being the first of the blaxploitation movement, Sweetback’s success was the reason the genre fully came to fruition. While it was so instrumental in the Genre’s genesis, however, Sweetback is unlike any other film considered to be a blaxploitation production. It attacked white America with intensity and displayed the black community’s suffering in a way that was deeply shocking, not least because it hadn’t been done before in film. Spoilers ahead!

Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) is the name given to a child who is adopted by women working in a brothel at the start of the film, imposed on him by one of the women in a controversial scene where she rapes the young boy, proclaiming ‘you have a sweet, sweet back’. Sweetback grows up to become a sex performer for paying audiences until the police come in one day needing a black man to ‘make them look good’ to their boss and Sweetback is told to go. On the way, the policemen pick up Moo-Moo (a young black militant) and begin to savagely beat him. This violence proves too much for Sweetback who beats the cops to death using his hand cuffs, setting up the rest of the film that involves a torturous escape from the man.

 Sweetback is arrested again the next day but is rescued by the (credited) black community who set fire to the police car in a sequence that is edited sensationally. After using his sexual prowess again on a friend’s wife to free himself from his handcuffs, Sweetback calls on his other contacts in the community including a Priest and a gambler to make it out of town, picking up Moo-Moo (who appears to be just wondering the streets) on the way. However, Sweetback still encounters obstacles before he reaches the Mexican border (using his sexual prowess to escape at every opportunity) in the form of biker gangs, more police officers, dogs and injuries.

What separates Sweetback from the other films of the Blaxploitation movement most prominently is it’s impactful and breath-taking cinematography and editing that takes huge inspiration from Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave. Watching this film, you are bombarded with pans, zooms, handheld shots, jump cuts, repeated shots, overlapping of frames and the effect is invigorating, added to this is the use of real locations and non-actors. This filmmaking was still avant-garde and hugely poignant to commercial audiences at the time and the experimental techniques give great impact to an incredibly political film. Techniques like this create a film that prevents an audience from believing that the story is a reality and instead have them consider why the film is made in this manner- highlighting the message. Van Peebles was clearly fully aware of the impact that cinematography and editing can have and uses them brilliantly here in a way that would not only disrupt an audience but reflects the disturbance the film caused nationwide in its political controversy and influence on the film industry. It’s because of this that this film could not have been made with a reserved style of direction that would’ve dampened Van Peebles’ strong political message.

Not only this, but through these techniques you can feel Van Peebles’ anger at the white oppression of black people in America and his determination to have his voice heard. This determination is shown in the film’s production too, which again echoes those used by the French New Wave and Neorealism. Using money gathered from a number of strange sources (including $100,000 of his own savings) and using an independent distributer, disguising his project as a porn film as well as producing, directing, writing, starring and scoring it himself, Van Peebles employed a style of Guerrilla filmmaking that adds to the film and even emphasises its message of defiance. The location shooting, and the inclusion of real local people contribute yet more soul and authenticity. It’s through this incredible guerrilla production method and striking, emotive film techniques that Van Peebles’ film almost embodies the defiance and resilience that the African American community had been fighting with for years in order to earn their rights.

This film, however has large drawbacks- most outstanding is a script that feels unfinished and disjointed. Van Peebles’ story has a number of very interesting plot points that, by themselves, are entertaining. However, other than the events that start the film’s main narrative (escaping the police), these plot points are not linked together by way of cause and effect and therefore feel random and disjointed. So much so that the second half of the film feels almost surrealist as Sweetback defeats a biker gang, fights off police officers, stumbles onto a music festival, finds a drifter willing to swap clothes with him etc. This partly comes from the fact that the character of Sweetback is very passive and one-dimensional, making very few practical decisions other than to run away. Sweetback is a very undeveloped character as a whole, speaking only six lines of dialogue throughout and revealing little about his motives or background-who and what is he leaving behind him? All we really know about Sweetback is that he is lusted after by women and has great sexual prowess. Therefore, it’s very hard to be invested in the character and, by extension, the story. The lack of character or story development leads to long sequences of just watching Sweetback run as the film’s soundtrack blares in the background.

The soundtrack itself is repetitive and brings a jazzy, upbeat feeling to the film that perhaps would have worked in the coolness of Super Fly or shaft but feels very out of place as we watch a man running for his life through the California desert.  

However, while the narrative of the film is disjointed and undeveloped with a one-dimensional lead character, Sweetback remains exciting, radiating energy through its dynamic cinematic techniques and use of colour and light. Not only this, but the rawness of the film created by Van Peebles’ resilient production process, that involves using none actors and location shooting, gives the film a personality and a brutality that was unmatched by other blaxploitation films. Much in the way that the streets of Rome and the real-life experience of the actors in Bicycle Thieves (1949), or the improvisation and renegade filmmaking of Breathless (1960) create films that become much more than a story, the defiant spirit of Sweetback speaks louder than its flaws. Film as an art form gives people a voice and, through this movie, you can feel Van Peebles’ need to speak out about the inadequate representations of African Americans in the media and America’s systematic oppression of the black community.

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