Watermelon Man (1970)

          Although screenwriter Herman Raucher’s storyline for Watermelon Man represents a trite expression of white guilt (with a distasteful counterpoint of white arrogance), the participation of director Melvin Van Peebles transforms the piece into a more complicated statement. Raucher’s story fancifully depicts what happens when a white bigot wakes up one morning to discover he’s become a black man. Suddenly forced to experience the racism of which he was previously a purveyor, the hero learns a lesson about sensitivity toward minorities.

          Columbia Pictures reportedly envisioned the movie with a white actor playing his black scenes in makeup, planning an ending in which the hero wakes from his “nightmare” to discover he’s white again. Van Peebles, the thorny independent artist who won entrée into Hollywood by making a European feature called The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968), persuaded the studio to embrace a different approach. In Van Peebles’ movie, the lead actor is a black man who wears makeup during his white scenes, and the ending depicts the hero embracing his new black identity.

          Given this provocative context, Watermelon Man should be a classic of race-relations cinema, but it’s not. For one thing, Raucher’s writing is infused with sitcom-style superficiality, a problem exacerbated by leading man Godfrey Cambridge’s exhausting performance. His acting sharpens once his character becomes embittered, but even then Cambridge is so far over the top it’s hard to parse nuances.

          The picture is equally divided between scenes at home, where the hero’s wife (Estelle Parsons) gradually shuns her husband because of his new color, and scenes at work, where racism leads to marginalization. A vast number of offensive clichés are invoked, some ironically and some less so, from the idea that black people require a steady stream of fried chicken to the notion that horny white women lust after every black man they encounter.
          Unsubtle as ever, Van Peebles employs awkward devices like flash cuts and superimpositions, plus he supplies a clumsy musical score that would have been more suitable for the broad-as-a-barn comedy of the silent-movie era. Based on his subsequent work, it’s clear Van Peebles was itching to move in a more experimental direction, but the tension between his offbeat flourishes and the movie’s homogenized photography is distracting. Like the leading performance, Van Peebles’ direction bludgeons everything interesting about Watermelon Man, making the picture’s flaws as prominent as its virtues.

Watermelon Man: FUNKY

Ode to Billy Joe (1976)

          A thoughtful drama adapted from country singer Bobby Gentry’s 1967 song of the same name, Ode to Billy Joe has a great first hour before it unravels. So even though viewers are given a plausible explanation for why the song’s tragic protagonist, Billy Joe McAllister, jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge—the mystery that made Gentry’s song a pop-culture phenomenon—muddy storytelling dilutes an otherwise poignant experience.
          Producer-director Max Baer and screenwriter Herman Raucher build their story around Bobbie Lee Hartley (Glynis O’Connor), a precocious teenager living in rural Mississippi circa 1953. Bobbie Lee is filled with curiosity about romance and sex, but her parents won’t let her date until she’s 16. Meanwhile, Bobbie Lee’s childhood friend, the slightly older Billy Joe McAllister (Robby Benson), is feeling hormonal surges of his own, so he courts Bobbie Lee relentlessly while still respecting her boundaries. The flirting scenes in particular are filled with entertainingly ornate dialogue: “I think I’m either adopted or depraved,” O’Connor remarks at one point. “Of the two, I prefer depraved.” (Even such minor characters as Bobbie Lee’s mother get atmospheric lines: “Mosquitoes always did take to you on in the thick heat,” Mom says.)
          Baer, who played Jethro on the ’60s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, displays a sensitive feel for the rhythms of Southern life, so his storytelling thrives during quiet scenes. Alas, it falters elsewhere. Most problematically, Baer introduces a major plot element without sufficient clarity, making the next 20 minutes of the picture frustratingly cryptic in a manner that’s out of step with what came before. (It should also be noted that the movie’s big reveal, while appropriate to the period of the story, has not aged well.) The presence of these narrative flaws is a shame, because so many things in the movie are worth watching. O’Connor is terrific, a spitfire bristling against constricting social expectations, and Benson adds dark dimensions to his patented puppy-dog persona. Joan Hotchkis and Sandy McPeak are authentic and warm as Bobby Lee’s parents, with Hotchkis radiating maternal understanding and McPeak wearing male pride with dignity. Rounding out the family, Terence Goodman is solid as Bobbie Lee’s testosterone-crazed older brother.

          Composer Michel Legrand provides a mournful score that evokes the arrangement of Gentry’s song for stylistic unity (half the song plays over the opening credits, setting up the story, and half plays at the end, tying up loose ends). On the visual front, cinematographer Michael Hugo makes the most of authentic locations like the decrepit span used for the Tallahatchie Bridge. So even with its flaws, Ode to Billy Joe is praiseworthy for its heady mixture of atmosphere, sensitivity, and tragedy.

Ode to Billy Joe: FUNKY