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Brought together for the first time – and each newly restored – these three films offer a fascinating insight into the early careers of two American cinema’s major talents.

In 1963, Robert De Niro stepped in front of a movie camera for the first time. The resulting film, a low-budget black and white comedy called The Wedding Party, would take three years to complete, and another three years to be released, but it would also establish a hugely important working relationship for the aspiring actor. One of the filmmakers, long before he became synonymous with suspense thanks to Carrie, Dressed to Kill and other classics, was Brian De Palma. He and De Niro would team up again in the next few years for two more comedies, both with a countercultural bent.

Greetings, the first film to receive an X certificate in the United States, is a freewheeling satire focusing on a trio of twentysomething friends – a conspiracy theorist, a filmmaker, and a voyeur played by De Niro – as they try to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Hi, Mom!, originally named Son of Greetings, returns to De Niro’s voyeur, now an aspiring maker of adult films, for another humorous glimpse at late-sixties society, this time turning its attentions to experimental theatre, cinéma vérité, the African American experience, and the white middle classes.

Brought together for the first time – and each newly restored by Arrow Films especially for this release – these three films offer a fascinating insight into the early careers of two American cinema’s major talents.

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• Brand new 2K restoration of The Wedding Party from the original film negative, carried out exclusively for this release by Arrow Films
• Brand new 2K restorations of Greetings and Hi, Mom! from original film materials, carried out exclusively for this release by Arrow Films
• Original uncompressed mono soundtracks
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing on all three films
• Brand new commentary on Greetings by Glenn Kenny, author of Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor
• Brand new appreciation of Brian De Palma and Robert De Niro’s collaborations by critic and filmmaker Howard S. Berger
• Brand new interviews with Charles Hirsch, writer-producer of Greetings and Hi, Mom!
• Brand new interview with actor Gerrit Graham on Greetings, Hi, Mom! and his other collaborations with Brian De Palma
• Brand new interview with actor Peter Maloney on Hi, Mom!
• Hi, Mom! theatrical trailer
• Newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin
• Limited collector’s edition booklet featuring new writing on the films by Brad Stevens, Chris Dumas and Christina Newland, plus an archive interview with Brian De Palma and Charles Hirsch

Really only Hi, Mom from this is special. Greetings is okay and The Wedding Party is just awful. While it doesn't have the De Niro theme I hope they could squeeze on Dionysus '69 as an extra.

knives wrote: Fri Aug 31, 2018 2:04 pm Really only Hi, Mom from this is special. Greetings is okay and The Wedding Party is just awful. While it doesn't have the De Niro theme I hope they could squeeze on Dionysus '69 as an extra.

I think I said enough about HI, Mom!, but are the rest really that worthless? I'm usually more fond of De-Palma the director than his abilities to create interesting narratives if that makes sense. i.e Dressed to Kill is stoopid but so much fun and so well directed

I'm surprised, considering how special these movies are for both De Palma and De Niro, and considering how many lavish releases from De Palma movies Arrow have done, that none of them seem (yet ?) to participate in the extras.

De Palma is one of my absolute favorites and easily the best of his generation to my eyes. That said he got off to a fairly rough start. There's a lot of good to Greetings, but the sequel is blatantly better as is something like Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now which has a number of narrative and stylistic similarities. It's definitely worth seeing as a stylish take on the country's psychology of the time. It's a movie worth seeing, but it mostly offers itself as a possibility for improvement. The Wedding Party is just garbage though with De Niro's hair predicting Owen Wilson's in Bottle Rocket being the only good thing about it and even that's a stretch.

Hi, Mom! is undoubtedly the highlight, but I'm really looking forward to the whole set.

I'm with tenia though, it's surprising and disappointing to see that neither De Palma or De Niro have contributed in any way and there's no (video) archival material featuring them either; I'm not sure how much relevance it would have, but there's a Dick Cavett episode with both De Palma and Scorsese that would've been nice to see. I'm sure De Niro would've came up in conversation.

knives wrote: Fri Aug 31, 2018 2:04 pm Really only Hi, Mom from this is special. Greetings is okay and The Wedding Party is just awful.

Exactly my evaluation of those films. I thought Murder à la Mod (not here), Greetings and Hi, Mom! were basically variations on the same film, with De Palma attempting to forge an early cinematic vision and identity (highly influenced by Godard and Blow-Up), with results improving each time out even if the last one is still inconsistent. Interesting artifacts though.

Great news. Obviously we all want the extraordinary Hi, Mom! yet I recall Greetings also being good.

Definitely the other treasure from that era is Murder a la Mod but if you want it badly enough you have to get the Criterion Blow-Out as we know.

Worth looking at the transfer details as Wedding Party is a 2k scan of the negative whereas Greetings & Hi, Mom! are scanned in the same resolution yet from the more vague “original film elements.”

I see that amazon pushed back the release date to 27 November.

Pushed back to December: UK - Dec 3. US - Dec 11

Don't remember if this was announced as a 3-disc set, but it is now a 2-disc set and the following extras seem to have been dropped

• Brand new interview with actor Gerrit Graham on Greetings, Hi, Mom! and his other collaborations with Brian De Palma

• Brand new interview with actor Peter Maloney on Hi, Mom!

Well, that's a shame. A set like this, the more discussion with those involved (or anyone, really) the better...
and yes, it was 3 discs. Price seems to've dropped too.

Mine has just arrived (UK)

Although these films are formally lively, in ways that are generally crass and obvious (which pretty much describes most of De Palma's work for me), they're pretty obnoxious even as period pieces, cluttered as they are by unalloyed racism, sexism and homophobia. (If you're ever up for a "how to dress like a fag" tutorial, it's all laid out for you in Greetings.)

For slumming auteurists, there are a LOT of elements in these early films that prefigure components of his later work, often with uncanny specificity (e.g. various references to Blow-Up), but these films are so adolescent that I'm not sure that's a positive.

I still think Hi Mom!'s second half is the best thing De-Palma ever made, and I'd rewatch this just for that part.

zedz wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:43 pm Although these films are formally lively, in ways that are generally crass and obvious (which pretty much describes most of De Palma's work for me), they're pretty obnoxious even as period pieces, cluttered as they are by unalloyed racism, sexism and homophobia. (If you're ever up for a "how to dress like a fag" tutorial, it's all laid out for you in Greetings.)

For slumming auteurists, there are a LOT of elements in these early films that prefigure components of his later work, often with uncanny specificity (e.g. various references to Blow-Up), but these films are so adolescent that I'm not sure that's a positive.

Just watched Greetings, and to be honest I'm not sure how much the film is homophobic. I'm still not sure and De Palma's sensitivity has always been rather childish in my opinion (and there are sexist overtones in all his films) but I think he makes fun of the trio as well, by trying to be a "fag" or a right wing militant.
I found a lot to be enjoyed in this, even though I agree it is a bit crude and closer to Lester's 60s comedies than later De Palma. But there are great things to be had here, and I really enjoyed the parts with De Niro that would return later in the much better Hi, Mom!. Now I need to get through the Wedding Party so I can rewatch Mom!.
But these are definitely fun for fans of De Palma, of which I am one.

Listening to the commentary by Glenn Kenny on Greetings. When we get to the beginning of the peeping tom segment with Robert De Niro reading a book, Kenny says he wasn't able to make out what the book is. I Image Googled some of the words that can be made out and found it: Sex Offenders.

Nice work! Takes me back to college, my Film Research Methods professor (who was obsessed with books in films— no surprise that he was a Godard expert) had me watch a selection of movies and identify with chain of deductions the exact editions of books depicted in the films based solely on what’s on the screen (the only one I remember offhand was Modesty Blaise in Pulp Fiction) - and this was ~15 years ago, before the internet was set up to make this a little easier with all the Google databases and a thousand retailers scanning their wares. Taking classes with him for a few years certainly made me hyper aware of book usage in movies!

That’s fascinating. I was having a fun time trying to make out the titles of the books on the Brenners’ shelves in The Birds just last week.

Something that always makes me laugh is seeing scenes from The Office set in David Wallace's office and recognizing the spine of one of the books on his shelf as film producer [Taxi Driver, The Sting, etc.] Julia Phillips' autobiography You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again; choosing to interpret the incongruity as something that reveals Wallace's interests/backstory instead of it just being the random piece of set dressing it most likely was.



I had picked up the book from a charity shop for like $1 a year or two before the book appeared on the show and found it a pretty good read.