GREETINGS (1968), dir. Brian De Palma
The Cinematic Technique of De Palma, fashioning Postcard of Distrust, Sexual Deviancy
During the last twenty-something years, Brian De Palma’s films have featured themes of voyeurism and obsession, while the director himself has employed musical scores that resemble Bernard Hermann in the way they ratchet up suspense. In the service of dark, psychological thrillers, these flourishes have earned De Palma the distinction, or derision, of being an Alfred Hitchcock clone. This is an insinuation I have always felt was unfair.
Haven’t we already seen what train wreck ensues when filmmakers simply ape Hitchcock’s camera moves, which is what happened in Gus Van Sant’s restaged “Psycho?” If that disaster proved anything, it’s that cloning the technical aspects of an auteur does not alone guarantee success. The director must bring something of himself to the project; he cannot get away with simple plagiarizing.
What complicates matters is, the personal traits De Palma brings to his movies are the same ones Hitchcock brought. Both share a fear of women. They each made films featuring characters who become obsessed or paranoid. And in their heyday (the 40’s and 50’s for Hitchcock, the 80’s for De Palma), both men pushed the boundaries of permissible violence and sexuality onscreen.
But De Palma also has a pretty strange sense of humor, which precedes his reputation even moreso than Hitchcock’s did (maybe because Hitchcock’s tended to be more subtle). In a movie like “Greetings,” one of De Palma’s earlier works, the bizarreness helps locate the film in the director’s canon, despite the lack of a Hitchcock-style plot.
The movie opens with TV footage of President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking the American people during a speech, “Have you ever had it better than you do right now?” It’s meant to be ironic, as the movie depicts a group of twenty-something New Yorkers who believe they are not living in the greatest era of their country’s history. Paul (Jonathan Warden) worries about having to go to Vietnam; he has an interview at his neighborhood draft office coming up. His pals Lloyd (Gerrit Graham) and John (Robert De Niro, in his first credited movie performance) want to help him fail it, so they keep him awake for two straight days. That way, Paul can convince the Army psychologist he has insomnia, rendering him unfit to serve.
Lloyd, meanwhile, doesn’t have to worry about being sent over to the ‘Nam. Any military official who spends five minutes talking to the lanky, wild-eyed JFK assassination aficionado would seek to have him committed. As for John, he seems confident he can fail the interview by convincing the recruiter of his involvement in a white-power militia group. After exhausting that plotline fairly early, John begins exploring his voyeuristic tendencies. He even starts to stalk unsuspecting women.
While the “peeper” portion may sound like familiar territory for the director, De Palma, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Hirsch, mostly plays that angle for laughs. John spends a lot of time following different women, but his compulsions usually lead to wacky hi-jinks, such as pretending to be an artist putting on a show called “Peepers and the Peeped.” After convincing a shoplifter (Rutanya Alda) from the bookstore where he works that his faux show is for real, he brings her back to his apartment, and records footage of the woman performing what should be her pre-bed ritual.
The scene’s humor derives from her horrendous acting, and the way she exaggerates her routine (Do most women wrap their stockings around their necks, then preen in front of their bedroom window…?). At the same time, the first-person perspective of the camera, representing John’s p.o.v., and the sound of his voice manipulating the subject, make the sequence feel uncomfortably voyeuristic. But for the most part, De Niro, who would later achieve iconic status in “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver” gives a solid comedic turn.
De Niro’s gift, which has served him well in countless, more serious roles, is the emotional investment he can put in every scene. When he finally shows up to the recruiter’s office, looking and sounding the way B.D. from “Doonesbury” would in the same situation, his façade initially seems way out there. However, De Niro’s genius is not playing the situation as comedy. On the contrary, he plays this junior jingoist as seriously as George C. Scott would later undertake George Patton. He inhabits the character, and I only wish Hirsch had scripted, and De Palma had filmed, the full interview which would have followed the introduction.
Graham and Warden do good work, too, embodying the mistrust that characterized the Vietnam War era, and the confusion that accompanied sexual liberation. Lloyd is obsessed with finding out the identities of the police officers who pulled up in front of the boarding house where Lee Harvey Oswald had a room. Supposedly, the cops honked their horns twice, then drove off. What was their relationship to one of history’s most famous assassins? Will the unexpected appearance of someone claiming to be the son of the boarding house owner finally break the case “wide open…?”
Paul, meanwhile, tries to find love through computer dating. His amusing vignettes (each proceeded by a psychedelically purple title card) feature women who want to use Paul—for sex without intimacy, as surrogate father, as religious inductee—without providing him with what he really wants. What is Paul looking for? Not mere sexual release, evidently. Why else would he turn down the attractive, mildly hostile Bronx secretary, who accused him of just wanting to get into her pants, but left him a trail of bread crumbs to where she lay naked in the bedroom…?
Well, one obvious reason is to let Lloyd sleep with her instead. This allows for “Greetings’” most brilliant moment of morbid lunacy: a long, single take where Lloyd, addressing the camera directly, disputes the FBI’s official ballistics report detailing President John F. Kennedy’s assassination wounds. As Lloyd rants on and on about the discrepencies, he uses a magic marker to plot the impact of every bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. However, Lloyd plots this information on the naked, sleeping body of the woman he just had sex with.
Naturally, drawing on a nude bedfellow becomes trickier when said figure lies on her back, which Lloyd needs access to. Lloyd addresses this problem with the confidence of someone who has done this sort of manipulating before. Whenever he needs her to lift an arm, or turn over onto her stomach so he can figure out the angle that the bullet exited out of the president, he simply plants kisses on a strategic location. The slumbering body inevitably moves, and Lloyd can continue with his work.
“Greetings” has an improvised, madcap energy, which sustains the movie while Hirsch and De Palma flail about for a plot. Indeed, the first half feels particularly aimless, like a collection of interesting montages and trick shots in search of genuine purpose. Granted, the filmmakers could have intentionally structured the movie that way, in order to reflect the lonely, listless, stuck-in-a-rut feeling that pervaded the country during the late 60's. But, in reflecting artfully on a quagmire, Hirsch and De Palma may have created their own morass, and one which requires patience to slog through.
Luckily, the dual appeal of De Niro and De Palma is considerable. “Greetings” gradually focuses more of its attention on John, as his penchant for falling into absurd situations make him the poster boy for his time. Perhaps De Palma was struck by the intensity De Niro brought to the peeper. Or maybe he recognized a star being born before his eyes. Cinematic history, as well as a peerless list of classic roles, certainly vindicates De Palma’s decision to spend more of the film’s second half following John. As for the director himself, there are moments when his sense of playfulness comes to the forefront. Take, for example, the scene where John chats up the shoplifter. As he describes “Peepers and the Peeped,” the camera slowly pulls back, and a woman can be seen undressing in her ground-level apartment window. It’s the perfect peepshow.
A book on Hitchcock’s films appears as a prop in Paul and Lloyd’s apartment. But I thought I recognized more of the influence of Antonioni, if anyone, in the montage sequences that occur during many of Paul’s couplings. Meanwhile, it’s fascinating to see that, back in 1968, De Palma was already proficient with cinematic sleight-of-hand. Initially, when the shoplifter performs the act which earns her her assignation, other voices distract us, and events happen so fast we can’t be sure what she did. Later on, however, when John meets her on the street, he mentions what happened. De Palma then cuts to the same clip; indeed, she shoplifted that book.
Throughout his career, De Palma has enjoyed leaving clues in plain sight. Then, as the mystery unfolds, he doubles back upon them. He encourages active audiences; he used sleight of hand in “Dressed to Kill” (1980), “Mission Impossible” (1996), as recently as “Femme Fatale” (2002). Perhaps Hitchcock also did the same trick in his time. But the thing to remember is De Palma used them in a genre Hitchcock wasn’t particularly known for.
Overall rating: **, *** if you're a De Palma fan (out of ****)
During the last twenty-something years, Brian De Palma’s films have featured themes of voyeurism and obsession, while the director himself has employed musical scores that resemble Bernard Hermann in the way they ratchet up suspense. In the service of dark, psychological thrillers, these flourishes have earned De Palma the distinction, or derision, of being an Alfred Hitchcock clone. This is an insinuation I have always felt was unfair.
Haven’t we already seen what train wreck ensues when filmmakers simply ape Hitchcock’s camera moves, which is what happened in Gus Van Sant’s restaged “Psycho?” If that disaster proved anything, it’s that cloning the technical aspects of an auteur does not alone guarantee success. The director must bring something of himself to the project; he cannot get away with simple plagiarizing.
What complicates matters is, the personal traits De Palma brings to his movies are the same ones Hitchcock brought. Both share a fear of women. They each made films featuring characters who become obsessed or paranoid. And in their heyday (the 40’s and 50’s for Hitchcock, the 80’s for De Palma), both men pushed the boundaries of permissible violence and sexuality onscreen.
But De Palma also has a pretty strange sense of humor, which precedes his reputation even moreso than Hitchcock’s did (maybe because Hitchcock’s tended to be more subtle). In a movie like “Greetings,” one of De Palma’s earlier works, the bizarreness helps locate the film in the director’s canon, despite the lack of a Hitchcock-style plot.
The movie opens with TV footage of President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking the American people during a speech, “Have you ever had it better than you do right now?” It’s meant to be ironic, as the movie depicts a group of twenty-something New Yorkers who believe they are not living in the greatest era of their country’s history. Paul (Jonathan Warden) worries about having to go to Vietnam; he has an interview at his neighborhood draft office coming up. His pals Lloyd (Gerrit Graham) and John (Robert De Niro, in his first credited movie performance) want to help him fail it, so they keep him awake for two straight days. That way, Paul can convince the Army psychologist he has insomnia, rendering him unfit to serve.
Lloyd, meanwhile, doesn’t have to worry about being sent over to the ‘Nam. Any military official who spends five minutes talking to the lanky, wild-eyed JFK assassination aficionado would seek to have him committed. As for John, he seems confident he can fail the interview by convincing the recruiter of his involvement in a white-power militia group. After exhausting that plotline fairly early, John begins exploring his voyeuristic tendencies. He even starts to stalk unsuspecting women.
While the “peeper” portion may sound like familiar territory for the director, De Palma, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Hirsch, mostly plays that angle for laughs. John spends a lot of time following different women, but his compulsions usually lead to wacky hi-jinks, such as pretending to be an artist putting on a show called “Peepers and the Peeped.” After convincing a shoplifter (Rutanya Alda) from the bookstore where he works that his faux show is for real, he brings her back to his apartment, and records footage of the woman performing what should be her pre-bed ritual.
The scene’s humor derives from her horrendous acting, and the way she exaggerates her routine (Do most women wrap their stockings around their necks, then preen in front of their bedroom window…?). At the same time, the first-person perspective of the camera, representing John’s p.o.v., and the sound of his voice manipulating the subject, make the sequence feel uncomfortably voyeuristic. But for the most part, De Niro, who would later achieve iconic status in “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver” gives a solid comedic turn.
De Niro’s gift, which has served him well in countless, more serious roles, is the emotional investment he can put in every scene. When he finally shows up to the recruiter’s office, looking and sounding the way B.D. from “Doonesbury” would in the same situation, his façade initially seems way out there. However, De Niro’s genius is not playing the situation as comedy. On the contrary, he plays this junior jingoist as seriously as George C. Scott would later undertake George Patton. He inhabits the character, and I only wish Hirsch had scripted, and De Palma had filmed, the full interview which would have followed the introduction.
Graham and Warden do good work, too, embodying the mistrust that characterized the Vietnam War era, and the confusion that accompanied sexual liberation. Lloyd is obsessed with finding out the identities of the police officers who pulled up in front of the boarding house where Lee Harvey Oswald had a room. Supposedly, the cops honked their horns twice, then drove off. What was their relationship to one of history’s most famous assassins? Will the unexpected appearance of someone claiming to be the son of the boarding house owner finally break the case “wide open…?”
Paul, meanwhile, tries to find love through computer dating. His amusing vignettes (each proceeded by a psychedelically purple title card) feature women who want to use Paul—for sex without intimacy, as surrogate father, as religious inductee—without providing him with what he really wants. What is Paul looking for? Not mere sexual release, evidently. Why else would he turn down the attractive, mildly hostile Bronx secretary, who accused him of just wanting to get into her pants, but left him a trail of bread crumbs to where she lay naked in the bedroom…?
Well, one obvious reason is to let Lloyd sleep with her instead. This allows for “Greetings’” most brilliant moment of morbid lunacy: a long, single take where Lloyd, addressing the camera directly, disputes the FBI’s official ballistics report detailing President John F. Kennedy’s assassination wounds. As Lloyd rants on and on about the discrepencies, he uses a magic marker to plot the impact of every bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. However, Lloyd plots this information on the naked, sleeping body of the woman he just had sex with.
Naturally, drawing on a nude bedfellow becomes trickier when said figure lies on her back, which Lloyd needs access to. Lloyd addresses this problem with the confidence of someone who has done this sort of manipulating before. Whenever he needs her to lift an arm, or turn over onto her stomach so he can figure out the angle that the bullet exited out of the president, he simply plants kisses on a strategic location. The slumbering body inevitably moves, and Lloyd can continue with his work.
“Greetings” has an improvised, madcap energy, which sustains the movie while Hirsch and De Palma flail about for a plot. Indeed, the first half feels particularly aimless, like a collection of interesting montages and trick shots in search of genuine purpose. Granted, the filmmakers could have intentionally structured the movie that way, in order to reflect the lonely, listless, stuck-in-a-rut feeling that pervaded the country during the late 60's. But, in reflecting artfully on a quagmire, Hirsch and De Palma may have created their own morass, and one which requires patience to slog through.
Luckily, the dual appeal of De Niro and De Palma is considerable. “Greetings” gradually focuses more of its attention on John, as his penchant for falling into absurd situations make him the poster boy for his time. Perhaps De Palma was struck by the intensity De Niro brought to the peeper. Or maybe he recognized a star being born before his eyes. Cinematic history, as well as a peerless list of classic roles, certainly vindicates De Palma’s decision to spend more of the film’s second half following John. As for the director himself, there are moments when his sense of playfulness comes to the forefront. Take, for example, the scene where John chats up the shoplifter. As he describes “Peepers and the Peeped,” the camera slowly pulls back, and a woman can be seen undressing in her ground-level apartment window. It’s the perfect peepshow.
A book on Hitchcock’s films appears as a prop in Paul and Lloyd’s apartment. But I thought I recognized more of the influence of Antonioni, if anyone, in the montage sequences that occur during many of Paul’s couplings. Meanwhile, it’s fascinating to see that, back in 1968, De Palma was already proficient with cinematic sleight-of-hand. Initially, when the shoplifter performs the act which earns her her assignation, other voices distract us, and events happen so fast we can’t be sure what she did. Later on, however, when John meets her on the street, he mentions what happened. De Palma then cuts to the same clip; indeed, she shoplifted that book.
Throughout his career, De Palma has enjoyed leaving clues in plain sight. Then, as the mystery unfolds, he doubles back upon them. He encourages active audiences; he used sleight of hand in “Dressed to Kill” (1980), “Mission Impossible” (1996), as recently as “Femme Fatale” (2002). Perhaps Hitchcock also did the same trick in his time. But the thing to remember is De Palma used them in a genre Hitchcock wasn’t particularly known for.
Overall rating: **, *** if you're a De Palma fan (out of ****)
Labels: **, 1968, Brian De Palma, Robert De Niro
posted by Phil | 5:44 PM
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