Greetings (1968)

So Brian DePalma and Robert DeNiro. It couldn't be that bad. But it is. If I'm going to be true to the many other films I've written about, I have to honestly rate this as I did. Apparently, people see this as satire. If satire is to work, it has to have a reverence for the original. I don't think there is an original, other than the time period. It is just a hodgepodge of events with no center to hold it together. I suppose it gave DePalma an opportunity to practice his craft. But the great Robert D. I read somewhere that when released, this was rated X. Wow, have times changed. There certainly nude scenes with flabby people and suggestive statements.

Brian De Palma's early films tend to deal with a very clear set of themes: homosocialised male power, voyeurism, sex and various gender conflicts, whereby all gender is a performance and white male heterosexuality needs to be rigorously, determinedly, infinitely reenacted to be maintained with any coherence, often by repeatedly destroying that which it defines itself against (homosexuality, femininity, the Other etc). Meanwhile, personal and social voyeurism (pornography, fantasies, government surveillance, an obsession with gazes, dreams, desires and watching) overlap, and his characters can often be found making their own movies, appearing on screens, doing their own prying, or displaying themselves as spectacle.As an example of De Palma's early obsessions with gender construction, consider one of his later sex thrillers, "Dressed to Kill", where Michael Caine plays Robert Elliot, a trans-gender who epitomises a post 60s trend amongst transsexuals - and certain strains of feminism - to subscribe to pseudo-Freudian essentialization and a medicalization of gender and sexuality (medical understandings of the gay/transsexual rely on a collapsing of sex and gender). Here, Elliot's male body is literally possessed by Bobbi, a feminine personality which desires a sex reassignment operation so that Elliot may become a "woman" with "the right body". In other words, transsexuals are victims of a society which equates the genitalia with gender behaviour and confuses the organ with the signifier; ridding themselves of the organ they can thus supposedly be rid of the signifier which divides them. The film then enters "Scarface" territory. The transsexual, like the "normal" subject, searches for illusory wholeness which he/she believes will be attained by altering the body in order to possess "it", the "it" which in American society is invested with the meaning of the subject's whole being. Unsurprisingly, in real life, transsexuals more frequently wish to be "girls" rather than "women"; an attempt to ward of confusion and establish a pre-social self. The incapability of achieving discursive mastery is itself a common De Palma theme, the subject continually floundering in the dark to sustain his identity. For De Palma, traditional male subjectivity is predicated on the notion of male wholeness and feminine lack, whilst "Woman" serves as the Other for the male subject, a place where he projects and disavows his castration. As inadequacy continually feminizes the subject, the cycle must be continually repeated.De Palma's little-seen early films, "Greetings" and "The Wedding Party", deal with similar material. "Greetings" revolves around a group of men who seek to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam war, and "Wedding" revolves around a group of men who seek to avoid being sucked into marriage. Both deal with men struggling to define and uphold masculinity, both star Robert De Niro ("Wedding" was his debut, "Greetings" was the first film to be given an X rating), both are shapeless, dialogue heavy, satirical, Godard inspired, experimental and revolve around various US counterculture movements"Wedding" centres on Charles, a young man who is days away from getting married. He discusses his anxieties with his buddies and spends much time weighing the benefits of a bachelor's life against that of married men. In the end – like most of these post-feminism marriage movies from the 60s – Charlie opts for marriage and stability. But the film itself jostles between viewing both marriage and bachelorhood as a means of affirming traditional hegemonic masculinity; marry a woman and you're not gay, bed many women outside of marriage and you're a "real man". Women (see "Casualties of War") function purely as the site of exchange between men, and exist solely to be conquered and bolster manhood."Greetings" opens with a moment of typical De Palma reflexivity, the American President doubly framed (on TV) as he addresses the nation. His country is portrayed as a giant male fraternity, a band of brothers who, because they've "never had it better", should go abroad, define themselves as men and fight in Vietnam. The film's heroes, a bunch of lowly figures who've "never had it good", then set out trying to avoid being drafted. One even attempts to turn himself gay so that he won't be conscripted. In both films we see an obsession with male performance and its attendant anxieties, and a heterosexuality that defines itself by employing homosexuality to define itself against. Masculinity is itself portrayed as a masquerade and normative heterosexual manhood as an impossible, and impossibly maintained, ideal. As the "homo-social" is inherently incoherent and points toward untenable aims, it has a preponderance toward dissolution and a tendency to assimilate everything.Furthermore, as the homosexual identity haunts the presumably heterosexual male identity, so too is the Government haunted or shown to be under siege. As a result the Presidency deems all those who oppose the Vietnam War to be "effeminate" and "sexualy deviant" (the Vietnamese are also feminized, emasculated heathens). The Government's obsessions with surveillance, spying and enforcement then becomes a form of gender anxiety, the State pressured to sustain and achieve national manhood (which in turns inspires racism and death wishes). In any male-dominated society, there is therefore a link between male homosocial desire and the structures for maintaining and transmitting patriarchal power."Greetings" ends with our draft dodgers in Vietnam. In a sublimated version of filmed murder, our heroes "film with a camera" a Viet Cong woman in the jungle. They order her to undress and pose, a scene which is juxtaposed with shots of an American woman manipulated into being photographed, both women's sexual exploitation linked to war, carnage and camera, and all other forms of masculinist cruelty and male obsession. Such scenes anticipate De Palma's "Redacted" and "Casulaties of War"; "war" as the mauling of the Feminine by hyper masculinity. In "Full Metal Jacket" one goes philosophically further, all modern, future warfare redefined as a benign, "feminine", merciful, conciliatory gesture, simultaneously disavowed and sanctioned.7.9/10 - An occasionally interesting satire. Worth one viewing.

I don't understand that this is supposed to be funny. Usually, I am a sucker for films that feature offbeat characters and non-linear story lines. I just didn't get it this time.Maybe, it's because that I am not familiar with life in the sixties, other than what I have read. Maybe, it's because I thought that this was going to be more of a violent film with extreme black humour. The humour is sort of black, but there is little to no violence here.De Niro is interesting to watch here and you can sense shades of his most famous character of Travis Bickle in some scenes. The scene in Vietnam works because it comes totally out of nowhere, but for the most part his character just seems goofy. I know that this kind of film was probably something that most people were not used to in the late sixties, but as more and more directors went counterculture in the 70s, this seems extremely boring by comparison and also kind of amateurish.I know that De Palma was still a rookie filmmaker here and this was probably some kind of experiment for him. It's a noble try but not very compelling.One more thing: Even for a sixties song, the tune played at the opening credits is probably one of the worst I have ever heard.

Brian De Palma, Robert De Niro in his first movie...it has to be good, right? That's what I thought. But I was hugely disappointed. "GREETINGS" is no more a comedy than SCHINDLER'S LIST. I didn't laugh a single time, nor grin or smile. It has one good gag, at the very end of the film, and if it had maintained that wit throughout I would have given it a higher rating.However it starts off very poor and only gets worse as time goes on. Made on a shoestring budget, and it shows in every scene. Continuity errors galore. De Palma, who edited the film, clearly has no handle on editing and literally jumps around from scene to scene. So, in one segment a group of characters are talking, and it suddenly jumps to fifteen minutes later in a different room, and they're still talking, and we're left wondering what on earth is going on.I only really wanted to see this because of Robert De Niro. I am a die-hard De Niro fan and will watch anything with him in it (I even sat through SAM'S SONG, which is even worse than this - by a long shot). However De Niro - despite top billing - is not in this film very much, and when he is, he's not very impressive. (Although he hardly does a bad job, either.) I couldn't believe De Palma was responsible for this film, it lacks all the typical Hitchcock trademarks of his. However, there are a few references - characters discuss the film BLOW-UP (1966) which he of course later loosely remade into BLOW OUT (1981) and at one point a female character subtly picks up HITCHCOCK / TRUFFAUT from a bookshelf and begins to read it.However the rest of this film lacks his typical visionary edge and I suppose it's because he was still learning (and that's clear in every frame). De Palma, never a friend of the MPAA, seems to push the boundaries a lot in GREETINGS and for the most part it's totally unnecessary. The whole subplot about De Niro's peeping-tom habits are disturbing and make us dislike his character - which is a problem since the sequel (HI, MOM! in 1970) revolves entirely around his character. (And for the record, GREETINGS was the first film awarded an X rating, which says something about its content. It's not too explicit nowadays, but we're left wondering WHY De Palma had to cram so much unnecessary sex and nudity into his film, because it seems like it's just there for the sake of being controversial - and almost 40 years later it is not controversial anymore, which makes it all the more outdated and pretentious.)Overall I was hugely disappointed in this movie. It's not funny. It's sophomoric, with stupid editing and direction (just watch the scene where De Niro and co. walk down a street and De Palma puts it in super-fast-motion - what the hell was he thinking?!). That, plus an unbearably outdated '60s overtone (and you thought EASY RIDER was outdated!) and truly awful theme tune (it sounds like the Beatles on drugs), make GREETINGS a truly disappointing experience.