Directed by Melvin Van Peebles
A racist insurance agent lives in a typical suburban neighborhood, but his bigoted world of taunting and harassing black people on and off the job is turned upside down when his skin inexplicably turns dark overnight.
Godfrey Cambridge Estelle Parsons Howard Caine D'Urville Martin Mantan Moreland Erin Moran Scott Garrett Paul Williams Kay E. Kuter Kay Kimberly Irving Selbst Emil Sitka Lawrence Parke Karl Lukas Ralph Montgomery Charles Lampkin Erik L. Nelson Donna Dubrow Frank Farmer Ron Pinkard Niva Ruschell Ray Ballard Robert Dagny Vivian Rhodes Matthias Uitz Rhodie Cogan Hazel Medina Paul Bradley Niva Ruschell Show All…
The Watermelon Man, L'uomo caffellatte, A Noite em Que o Sol Brilhou, 黑皮肤的白人, 워터메론 맨, L’home que es va tornar negre
USAR USA 
So funny, yet so angry. Melvin van Peebles makes you think twice about laughing. He has a finger pointed at everybody.
The film begins as a broad comedy before flipping to something much darker, though just as humorous.
And oh, what a perfect ending.
I’m glad race relations have impro- lol I couldn’t do it,
When I saw several bits and reviews of this film on "Is That Black Enough," I knew to expect something entertaining but not as hilarious.
Even though it took me a while to get acclimated to the absurd humor that evoked memories of Jerry Lewis comedies and skirted between satire and farce, by the end I was either laughing out or having a great time. The music can be a little too cartoonish at times, and the scenes with the colored lighting while the man is losing his sanity were a little too much.
The message is overt and even overwhelming at times, but Cambridge is well aware of the genre he is working in, and the picture succeeds thanks…
Brilliantly mordacious work of satire that makes us question why we may be laughing, before it promptly strips away the laughter all together, giving way to a brutal truth. Deconstructing the Black experience in America through a blend of humor and rage, Melvin Van Peebles delivers us one of the most farcical, socially potent pieces of satirical cinema ever made. It is a testament to Van Peebles as an auteur that a major studio even funded this, and even more admirable was his decision to abandon the Hollywood system entirely after this to craft an even more radical work 100% his own in ‘Sweet Sweetback’ a year later. Where that film falters only as a result of a questionable opening sequence…
Melvin Van Peebles’s only foray into Hollywood filmmaking, Watermelon Man is one of the most audacious, radically conceived works to be financed by a major American studio in the 1970s. Comedian Godfrey Cambridge delivers a virtuoso performance (initially in whiteface) as Jeff Gerber, a loudmouthed, bigoted white insurance salesman whose sitcomlike suburban existence is jarringly upended when he wakes up to discover, in a wild spin on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, that he has become a Black man. What ensues is a ferocious satire of society’s racist double standards that gradually transforms into an empowering portrait of awakening Black consciousness, executed with a mix of acerbic irreverence and deadly serious political commentary by a relentlessly subversive Van Peebles.
WATERMELON MAN is in our Melvin Van Peebles: Four Films Collector's Set. The set arrives on September 28, 2021. To learn more or pre-order, visit Criterion.com.
"- What happened to the flaming liberal I was married to?
- I'm still liberal, but to a point."
Melvin Van Peebles one studio movie fits surprising well between the new waveish The Story of Three Day Pass and the exploitation anger of Sweetback. It wouldn't work without Cambridge wonderful performance, but he and Van Peebles combine to take the liberal sanctimonious Rod Serling does Glenteman's Agreement premise and turn it outside out making it so specfic, pointed and angry and allowing for a trajectory that moves not towards apleasement but progressive radicalization. There still moments when its original sitcomy premise shows up but they add to the overall premise.
The only film I’ve ever seen that shows the absurdity of race and thus the absurdity of racism. There is no sense in it, the only thing tangible is what it does to people and how it organizes our world. Peebles film is truly the indispensable race film, and it’s a shame that it has seemed to fall out of conversation. Why? Because in fact, it is anarchic and militant. Anarchic in its cinematic form. How it switches through styles, just like our main characters life is switching. And militant in its message, that once you accept race and your position in it, if you are Black, you will inevitably became a militant warrior, readying for a revolution when it comes.
Just an absolute all-timer. I think America is scared of this film, and it’s why it’s not talked about enough.
A racial version of Kafka's Metamorphosis? With the choppy editing style of Performance, a funky score by its director and jokes that still hold up? Sure thing. (I'll fill you in on the premise; a bigoted white insurance salesman wakes up one day to find he's turned black overnight. That's right!) Apparently the studio initially planned to cast a white actor (such as, perplexingly, Alan Arkin or Jack Lemmon) as Jeff Gerber, but director Melvin Van Peebles (father of New Jack City director Mario) wisely persuaded them to instead go with black comic Godfrey Cambridge - just as well, because his comic talents help the film be as amusing as it would be uncomfortable were the protagonist predominantly wearing blackface.…
What should be a sharp satire of racial injustice becomes an awkward mess of tone-deaf humor and confused intentions, offering little more than uncomfortable discomfort. Whiteface can't mask the flaws of this sour fruit of a film. Overripe.
“What happened to the flaming liberal I was married to?”
“I’m still liberal… But to a point.”
First Melvin Van Peebles and a film I'm frankly shocked to find out is a studio comedy. Jeff Gerber (black actor Godfrey Cambridge sporting whiteface) begins his morning routine, an exercise routine and tanning session. Intercut with pictures of his white children and wife, he's a caricature of white suburban bliss, a finely manicured sustained performance.
The casting is crucial to the equation. Gerber's whiteness is unsettling and bizarre. He's not someone exactly bigoted but he has no understanding of his own privilege. His wife feigns interest in the Civil Rights Movement of the era and he's quick to dismiss it as something that can be forgotten by changing the channel. He begins his day by jogging in business attire…
"Critics everywhere"
A bigoted white insurance salesman is forced to confront his own prejudices when he is inexplicably changed into a black man overnight and experiences discrimination, racism and a life without privilege.
Watermelon Man is as biting a satire as it is a hilarious comedy. As loose adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphoses go, it's got to be among the most unique of the already strange source material. Melvin Van Peebles pulls no punches at all in laying bare the absurd double standards not only along race lines but also (to a lesser degree) along gender lines. The script is very funny and Godfrey Cambridge gives a fully committed performance that involves a lot of shocked yelling and outrage. His middle…
