Hi Mom ( ***) Robert De Niro Gerritt Graham ..1969...directed by Brian DePalma
Imagine Taxi Driver directed by Woody Allen. ..This film is as close as you can get. The DVD box credits 1970 but the film credits say 1969. The significance? Young De Niro made this film with young " social satarist?" Brian De Palma in the summer of 1969 in Greenwich Village. At that time the Greenwich Village director with whom DeNiro would forever be associated, Martin Scorcese was 100 miles upstate as a cameraman at the Woodstock Festival. De Niro and De Palma made 3 films together . The other two being, Greetings ( 68) and The Wedding Party ( 69) . All 3 are social satires. De Palma shows a black comic side that would not be evident in his later work which includes Carrie, Scarface, and The Untouchables.
In Hi Mom Robert DeNiro foreshadows characters we would get to know years later; King Of Comedy's Rupert Pupkin and Taxi Driver's Travis Bickel. Radical street theater is used to flesh out hipocracy. Black power and the Viet Nam war are topical and in your face.If you ever walked down La Guardia Place or Bleeker St. in Greenwich Village in 1969 you will enjoy this film. Three years before Mean Streets, four years before The Godfather .
You will see some surprises..from Charles Durning to Gerritt Graham to Alan Garfield.
Garfield was featured in many social satires in that period including Putney Swope and Bananas and those two films have a kindred spirit for different reasons.
At one point we find De Niro's character reading The Urban Guerilla and quoting a passage that suggests that : "no radical organization can exist because they have all been infiltrated by the man..the only course left for radical action..is the individual."...at that point the look on his face is almost a comic outtake from Taxi Driver.
I found this DVD at the Big Lots Dollar Store in Poughkeepsie for $3. A real find.
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