HI, MOM!

US, 1970, 87 minutes, Colour.
Robert de Niro, Charles Durning, Allen Garfield, Jennifer Salt, Gerrit Graham, Paul Bartel.
Directed by Brian de Palma.

Hi, Mom! is an early film from Brian de Palma who was to move into the mainstream with his homages to Hitchcock, Sisters and Obsession. This film is something of a homage as it is reminiscent of Rear Window.

Robert de Niro (who had worked with de Palma in 1968 in Greetings, with Gerrit Graham) is a Vietnam veteran who returns, sets up in an apartment and begins to snoop on his neighbours and film them. This leads to his political radicalisation and terrorism. In this way, it is an anticipation of de Niro’s Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver six years later. De Niro appeared in de Palma’s The Untouchables as Al Capone.

This film reflects the kind of independent film-making that was popular at the end of the 1960s and was the cinema of young and critical directors.

Directed by Brian de Palma.

1.This film’s place in the career of Robert de Niro? The cast?

2.Small budget, New York City, colour and black and white photography? Squalid apartments, windows and apartments, the city streets, the world of pornographic films and theatres, the world of drama, television? Street drama and protest? Editing? The structure of the film and the announcing of its various parts?

3.The home movie style, young film-maker, the end of the 60s, styles and issues?

4.Robert de Niro as John, the visit to the squalid apartment, the tour, his taking it? The discussions with Joe about the film-making? The visit to the porno theatre? His getting the camera, the set-ups? The Rear Window experience as he spied on his neighbours?

5.John and Julie, the technique for meeting her, the seduction, the phone call, the lies? Julie and her background, response to John? Going out, the affair, the consequences?

6.The clash with Joe, the question of the equipment, the film not being made? The transition to the black play, its issues, performance? Social drama, psychodrama, rhetoric?

7.John as hero, the young man in New York City, involvement, his changing concerns? A media man – and the final greeting of, “Hi Mom”?