Review by Roger Carpenter
Before Brian De Palma became THAT De Palma and before Robert De Niro scored big with multiple high-profile roles, they were just two twenty-somethings trying to put together film careers. De Palma was a film school student and De Niro was a no-name actor.
The two first met around 1963 when De Niro was cast in a supporting role in De Palma’s first film, The Wedding Party. The film is a farce about a groom who visits his soon-to-be bride’s family estate for the forthcoming nuptials. His two friends and groomsmen (played by De Niro and William Finley), who are there to support him, initially try to talk the groom out of the marriage. The groom refuses to listen to their arguments and turns them away. Yet as the day looms large, the groom begins having second thoughts even as the groomsmen have changed their thinking and try to keep the wedding from falling apart. Also starring De Palma fave Jennifer Salt and Jill Clayburgh, the film wasn’t released until 1969 when De Niro was making a splash in Off-Broadway theater and De Palma’s second film was making a decent amount at the box office.
The Wedding Party is a fun and harmless little comedy, filmed in black-and-white and notable for De Palma’s use of jump cuts and silent film techniques such as the use of title cards to explain scenes as well as fades created by closing the iris of the camera.
While William Finley also became a De Palma fave and appeared in several later films for the director, De Palma recognized De Niro’s talent and so, when the time came to make his third feature (De Palma’s second feature, Murder a la mod, was a critical failure in early 1968), he cast De Niro in the starring role for 1968’s Greetings.
Greetings was a satire about a group of young men dodging the Vietnam War draft. De Palma’s first feature in color, it was notoriously the first film to receive the brand new X rating from the MPAA, beating out the more famous Midnight Cowboy by five months. De Niro stars as Jon Rubin, one of a triumvirate of listless young men trying to avoid the war. De Niro’s character of Jon Rubin was loosely modeled on De Palma himself and is portrayed as an aspiring filmmaker with a taste for Peeping Tom-ism. A second character was modeled after co-writer Charles Hirsch, who was a Kennedy assassination conspiracy nut. The film is episodic in nature and, even this early, one can see De Palma’s influences and quirky filmmaking techniques as characters break the fourth wall and read aloud to the audience, the group marches from one location to another similar to the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night, and other, more esoteric influences. The film was popular at the time, grossing over a million dollars, and one can easily see why. The characters are likable and the story quirky and funny. The film has a decided lean to the political left and can be seen as a protest against the war.
Greetings was popular enough for a sequel to be made entitled Hi, Mom! and released in 1970. The film again follows De Niro who reprises the role of Jon Rubin. The film begins with Rubin in Vietnam, having managed to only delay the draft. Upon his return, Rubin’s voyeurism kicks into full force and he strikes upon the idea of expanding upon the burgeoning adult film industry by filming his neighbors through their windows and recording their daily activities. The film is most notable for a sequence which used experimental theater and cinema verite techniques to record a happening called “Be Black Baby,” an experimental theatrical experience where African Americans helped whites learn what it felt like to be black in America.
De Palma is well-known for his use of split screen and though there is no actual use of the technique present in Hi, Mom!, there is a terrific scene when De Niro, as Rubin, describes his idea of filming ordinary lives through his window to a woman he wants to be a part of the film. They are standing in the street to the left of the screen. As De Niro describes a fictional woman coming into her apartment, on the right side of the screen, a light is switched on and viewers see a young woman enter a room and watch as she mirrors the action described by De Niro. It’s a simple yet brilliant way to use split screen without resorting to expensive opticals yet subtle enough that it took a second viewing for my brain to realize just what De Palma had done and how well-planned the scene was.
All three films, The Wedding Party, Greetings, and Hi, Mom!, represent De Palma’s earliest work and allows film historians to understand De Palma’s influences much earlier than his more famous films like Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, Obsession, Carrie, Blow Out, and Dressed to Kill. For viewers who only know De Palma as a horror director, these films also allow one to view De Palma doing some high quality comedy. Viewing De Niro as a 20-year-old, first-time actor is also fairly amazing. Already confident in his abilities, one can see from these films that he was obviously going places.
Now Arrow Films USA has packaged these three rarities together in a three disc Blu-Ray presentation. Each film is a brand new, 2K scan from original film materials (in the case of The Wedding Party, from the actual film negative). Special features include a commentary for Greetings by De Niro biographer Glenn Kenny, which is an informative and interesting commentary. Also included is an appreciation of De Palma by Howard Berger, two separate interviews with writer-producer Charles Hirsch, and interviews with several of the actors in the films, along with a trailer for Hi, Mom! These features help give each film some perspective and allows the viewer to learn the early history of these two important filmmakers. Finally, the first pressing of this package comes with a collector’s booklet filled with new writing about the films as well as archival interviews with De Palma and Charles Hirsch.
This box set is now available for purchase at Amazon or you can purchase the film directly from Arrow Video at http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/category/usa/.
