Themes: Political Unrest, Conspiracies, Filmmaking
Main Cast: Robert De Niro, Charles Durnham, Abraham Goren, Lara Parker, Jennifer Salt
Release Year: 1970
Country: US
Run Time: 87 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Brian De Palma takes on late 1960s media culture in his followup to Greetings (1968). Seeking a place in New York life one way or another, Vietnam vet John Rubin (Robert De Niro) moves into a Greenwich Village dive, with hopes of becoming a director for porn king Joe Banner (Allen Garfield). Rubin sells Banner on his idea to make "Peep Art" by filming the racy action in the building windows across from his apartment. He plans to seduce talky window denizen Judy (Jennifer Salt) to get the film he wants; but when that plan fails, John trades his camera for a TV and joins a radical theater troupe for their performance piece, "Be Black Baby." Inspired by the radicals, John decides to make his own violent political statement -- or does he just want to be on TV? Mixing long passages of the TV-framed "Be Black Baby" with John's misadventures in Manhattan, the film sends up political extremism, liberal guilt, and the Chicago 1968 protestors' mantra that "the whole world is watching," as it all becomes one big staged performance for the cameras. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Review
Lurking beneath the humor of director Brian De Palma's irreverent breakthrough comedy is the politically charged suggestion that, in an already hyped-up environment, Vietnam vets may not be so easily re-assimilated to the home front. The main character of Rubin is something of a precursor to star Robert De Niro's ultra-violent, ultra-alienated Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976). Independently produced, and shot for very little money on location in the Village, the film has a loose narrative structure and apt downtown details that give it a keen feel for the counterculture milieu on which it comments. More a cult favorite than a mainstream success, the film spotlights De Palma's visual smarts and interest in media voyeurism, and De Niro's off-kilter Rubin, retrospectively making Hi, Mom! a clever forerunner of the subsequent '70s work of both men. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Nelson Peltz - Playboy; Hector Valentin Lino, Jr. - N.I.T. Journal Revolutionary; Carole Leverett - N.I.T. Journal Revolutionary; Ruth Bocour - N.I.T. Journal; Arthur Bierman - N.I.T. Journal at Newsstand; Buddy Butler - "Be Black, Baby" Troupe; Joe Fields - Audience Member; Gene Elman - Audience Member; Peter Maloney - Pharmacist; Floyd L. Peterson - Newscaster Winnicove; Jeffrey Lesser - s; William Daley - Co-op Neighbor; Allen Garfield - Joe Banner; Gerritt Graham - Gerrit Wood
Credit
Peter Bocour - Art Director, Brian De Palma - Director, Paul Hirsch - Editor, Eric Katz - Composer (Music Score), John Andreoni - Songwriter, Eric Katz - Songwriter, Robert Elfstrom - Cinematographer, Charles Hirsch - Producer, Brian De Palma - Screenwriter
Its most memorable sequence is one where a black radical group invite a group of WASPs to feel what it's like to be black, in a sequence called Be Black, Baby. It is both a satire and an example of the experimental theatre and cinéma vérité movements. Shot in the style of a documentary film, it features a theater group of African American actors interviewing Caucasians on the streets of New York City, asking them if the whites know what it is like to be black in America.
Later, a group of theater patrons attend a performance by the troupe, wherein soul food is served. 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 then attempt to escape from the building, and they 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, arresting members of the white audience under the pretense that they are black. The entire sequence plays with natural sound, and is "unrehearsed" and in "real time." De Palma's familiarity and collaboration with experimental theatre informs the sequence and ratchets up the emotional impact of those who view it, simultaneously engaging their personal responses to racism and commenting on the deceptive and manipulative power of cinema. "If truth itself is plastic," the sequence asks, "then filmed truth is deeply flawed."
The sequence concludes with a thoroughly battered and abused audience raving about the show, showering praise on the black actors, crowing "Clive Barnes [New York Times theater critic] was right!"
Be Black, Baby remains one of the most challenging and intriguing sequences from its era, and its use of an audience's willingness to become emotional accomplices sheds light on De Palma's subsequent career.
MPAA Rating Board
According to the book "The Movie Rating Game" by Stephen Farber (Public Affairs Press, 1972), the film was originally given an "X" rating by the MPAA, but after a few minor trims, it was approved for an R. The main cut occurred during the scene where Gerrit Graham paints his entire body for the "Be Black Baby" performance. He hesitated for a moment about painting his penis, and then finally finished the job. The actual painting of the penis was deleted to get the R. (The first film, "Greetings", was released with an X after losing an appeal to change it to an R.)
