If anyone wants proof of the total, blind, unmitigated insufferableness of the American film industry, merely reflect on the fact that not one feature film has ever been directed by a Negro. This came forcibly to my attention with The Story of a Three Day Pass, a French film directed by an American Negro, Melvin Van Peebles. And I wouldn't be making the comment now if I hadn't found the film so pleasantly and sincerely made, so filled with delightful touches of humor, and for a first effort, so surprisingly adept technically…. [It] is enriched by Van Peebles with insight and human detail.

It has some weak points, too; they come from a tendency to caricature and stereotype. The soldier's company commander is too patently a prejudiced idiot, and Van Peebles takes the opportunity to pillory a group of traveling Negro gospel-singing ladies who behave like a DAR...