I've tried hard to find something admirable or engaging about "The Story of a Three Day Pass," but I can't make it. I don't see why the fact that the film was directed by a Negro—Melvin Van Peebles—and was achieved in a bad, hard time should inhibit anyone from saying that it is a craven and unfelt picture. You could call it "unpretentious," but that would be a coverup, for the truth is that you pine for the film to be a little immodest and quit licking your boots. The story is very simple, and it could be fine. An American Negro soldier with three days' leave has an affair with a French girl—in France, tactfully—which ends in idly dealt-out perfidies and retaliations by the whites around him. If the film had mustered any natural effrontery about telling what happens, or any regard for...