Hi, Mom
| Hi, Mom! | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster
| |
| Directed by | Brian De Palma |
| Produced by | Charles Hirsch |
| Written by |
Brian De Palma Charles Hirsch |
| Starring |
Robert De Niro Allen Garfield Jennifer Salt Lara Parker Paul Bartel Charles Durning Gerrit Graham |
| Music by | Eric Kaz |
| Cinematography | Robert Elfstrom |
| Edited by | Paul Hirsch |
Production company |
West End Films
|
| Distributed by | Sigma III Corp. |
Release date |
|
Running time |
87 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Hi, Mom! is a 1970 American black comedy film by Brian De Palma, and is one of Robert De Niro's first movies. De Niro reprises his role of Jon Rubin from Greetings (1968). In this film, Rubin is a fledgling "adult filmmaker" who has an idea to post cameras at his window and film his neighbors.
The film's most memorable sequence involves a black radical group who invite a group of WASPs to feel what it is like to be black, in a sequence titled Be Black, Baby. The sequence is both a satire and an example of the experimental theatre and cinéma vérité movements. Shot in the style of a documentary film using a hand-held camera and grainy black and white film, it features a theater group of African American actors interviewing white-skinned Caucasians on the streets of New York City, asking them if they know what it is like to be black in the United States.
Later, a group of white theater patrons attend a performance by the troupe. First they are forced to eat soul food. The white audience is then subjected to wearing shoe polish on their faces, while the African American actors sport whiteface and terrorize the people in blackface. The white audience members attempt to escape from the building and are ambushed in the elevator by the troupe. As two of the black actors rape one of the white audience members, Robert De Niro arrives as an actor playing an NYPD policeman, and arrests members of the white audience under the pretense that they are black. The entire sequence plays with natural sound, is acted to appear unrehearsed, and apart from several cuts plays in "real time". De Palma's familiarity and collaboration with experimental theatre informs the sequence and exerts considerable emotional impact upon viewers, simultaneously engaging their personal responses to racism and commenting on the deceptive and manipulative power of cinema.
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