Robert De Niro's First Major Movie Was A Controversial Comedy From A Legendary Director

Brian De Palma's 1968 comedy movie "Greetings," starring a young Robert De Niro, was the very first narrative film to receive an "X" rating. Keep in mind, though, this was before the adult film industry began unofficially co-opting the rating and the term "X-rated" referred exclusively to porn.

It's likely you haven't seen "Greetings," as it is something of an obscurity. It was only the second feature that De Palma directed after the wild experimental film "Murder a la Mod," released earlier in the same year. "Greetings" also marked the first time De Niro and De Palma worked together, followed by "The Wedding Party" (1969), "Hi, Mom!" (1970), and "The Untouchables" (1987). Of course, by 1987, the pair had become gigantic celebrities, with De Niro being considered one of the best actors to ever to do.

"Greetings" is a largely plotless, whimsical comedy movie about three friends exploring the social and political milieu of 1968. De Niro stars as a character named Jon, with Jonathan Warden and the late, great Gerrit Graham playing his buddies Paul and Lloyd, respectively. Jon is the aspiring filmmaker of the lot and a horny peeping tom, so may be a stand-in for De Palma himself. Paul, by comparison, is the romantic of the group, whereas Clay is an off-kilter conspiracy theorist. The film openly talks about the Vietnam War and the killing of John F. Kennedy (which, in the United States, was still lingering in the national consciousness), and there are discussions of an increasingly computerized life. In other words, "Greetings" is a contemplation and a conversation, not a traditional melodrama.

"Greetings" is currently available to stream on Prime Video, and fans of experimental 1960s art films will certainly want to take a look. Free-form, narrative-less, and controversial movies are kind of my jam.

Roger Ebert reviewed "Greetings" back in 1969, and he gave the film three stars (out of four), noting that it wasn't entirely successful as a comedy but that the film has "a certain charm, a freshness and openness." Ebert compared it to the works of Laurel & Hardy (who also inspired "The Sopranos," amazingly enough), in that it's a string of comedic vignettes and not a maudlin, Charlie Chaplin-like epic about emotions and plotting. Comedies, Ebert posited, don't have to make sense. He added, "De Palma is not a [Mel] Brooks, not yet anyway, but he is one of the rare contemporary filmmakers who has an instinct for movie comedy." In retrospect, this is a hilarious comment, as Brian De Palma would later develop a reputation for voyeuristic sex thrillers.

The film follows its three lead characters, three women that are computer dates, and Lee Harvey Oswald's landlady's nephew. Adult films are present in these people's lives, and this was a few years before "Deep Throat" temporarily moved XXX features into the mainstream. Ebert noted that a lot of the movie involves merely taking cameras out onto the streets of New York and filming guerrilla style. "Greetings" came a few years before the proper birth of the New York filmmaking movement known as the "no wave" movement, and no wave films didn't really begin to emerge properly until about 1976. De Palma would eventually become a commercial filmmaker, but his early movies seem to be definite precursors to no wave works.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were a few squares who, upon reviewing "Greetings" at the time of its theatrical release, got all riled up over the movie's nudity and profanity. It's fair to say, though, that most progressive-minded types wouldn't blink twice at the film today.

Case in point: While writing for The New York Times, Howard Thompson argued, "Most of ['Greetings'] is strained and unfunny, with some generous nudity for nudity's sake and a hip sprinkling of four-letter words." Call me prurient if you must, but I take no issue with nudity for nudity's sake or the hip sprinkling of four-letter words. Bear in mind, however, that nudity and cussing had only begun to become common in mainstream cinema at the time, so it might have seemed unusual to a critic like Thompson. It was also the nudity and the cussing that earned "Greetings" its X rating, although that just meant that folks under 16 couldn't see it. 

One can find Arrow Video Blu-rays of "Greetings," "The Wedding Party," and "Hi, Mom!" on the second-hand market. We even included "Hi, Mom!" on our rundown of '70s movies everyone needs to watch at least once, so it's clearly made an impression on movie-lovers (of a certain age, anyway). "Greetings," on the other hand, has been generally forgotten, but, as stated, fans of late-'60s experimental cinema will definitely dig it. It's very dry but funny.