POIGNANT 'PROMISES'

ON WETA, MITCH SNYDER'S STORY

Fact easily outdoes fiction in "Promises to Keep," Washington filmmaker Ginny Durrin's moving and understated chronicle of activist Mitch Snyder and his crusade on behalf of the homeless. CBS made a TV movie about Snyder -- it's mentioned in the documentary -- but the genuine article proves far superior.

Durrin's hour-long film will be shown at 9 tonight on Channel 26. Durrin hopes the full PBS system will air it this fall or winter.

Wisely and effectively, Durrin and cowriter Aviva Kempner leave the dramatic rhetoric to Snyder, who is masterful at it. The narration, spoken mousily by Martin Sheen (who played Snyder in the CBS film), is commendably restrained and levelheaded.

Snyder's story is told through film clips, news reports from the archives of WJLA and WUSA, and newspaper headlines Durrin says are replicas of the real thing. And of course, we hear from some of the people to whom Snyder has pledged the last measure of devotion: homeless souls whom virtually everyone else abandoned.

"There's a roof over my head, that's the main thing," says a man inside Snyder's crisis-wracked shelter. "I know this looks like a pile of junk to you," says Granny, an aged woman, but her collection of belongings includes items of great value to her.

The Snyder story is worthy of Frank Capra for the way it pits a stubborn idealist against an aloof and even vindictive bureaucracy. President Reagan promised Snyder he'd refurbish a federal building so the homeless could occupy it; Snyder had to stage hunger strikes and sit-ins over a four-year period to get that promise kept.

"He don't care nothin' about us," a protester says of Ronald Reagan. But an indifferent Congress is also rightly accused. Snyder, testifying before a committee, accurately tells legislators they'd be moving a lot faster if the building being restored were some official government edifice.

His arguments are passionate and convincing, and Durrin presents them with a keen appreciation for piquant imagery. Arrested for trespassing on the White House lawn, protesters recite the Lord's Prayer as D.C. cops haul them off.

Gospel numbers by the Richard Smallwood Singers also brighten the sound track. There's a highly charged clip from one edition of WHMM-TV's "Evening Exchange" program, in which Snyder lambasted the head of a hastily formed rival group. The federal government wanted to bus the homeless off to an out-of-the-way structure in Anacostia; Snyder dug in for another fight.

He was met with wild charges from government officials about a "Jonestown" in the making. The homeless were said to be armed and dangerous. Those making the charges were eventually discredited.

The film is scrupulous in most details, but not when it comes to Snyder's personal history -- abandonment of his family, and his "stint in prison" -- which is glossed over. It would have been better to be more forthcoming.

As in a Capra film, a happy ending comes to the rescue. It may be a tentative happy ending, and the Snyder struggle hardly seems over, but "Promises to Keep" concludes on a note of galvanizing hope. This is a very good film that keeps the promises it makes.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.