Melvin Van Peebles’s Declaration of Independence Armond White The final shot of Melvin Van Peebles’s 1968 debut film, Story of a Three-Day Pass, celebrates FREEDOM. Turner (Harry Baird), a black GI stationed in France, had spent a weekend holiday with a white Frenchwoman, Miriam (Nicole Berger), enjoying all the imaginable pleasures a red-blooded American male could want. Now, after some minor social and personal roadblocks, the girl is gone — as Smokey Robinson sang. Left in a familiar, conflicted, patriotic place, he flops onto his barracks cot with a sense of relief. The pressure is off, momentarily. That freeze-frame image, reminiscent of Francois Truffaut’s French New Wave breakthrough