Hi, Mom!

[The] shockingly realistic and nerve-racking [Be Black, Baby] sequence (shot in faux-vérité black and white) is immensely troubling, and De Palma’s depiction of this and the succeeding acts of “real” violence is perhaps too uncomplicated to function. But the anger and genuine sense of subversion remains, and that is what matters.

This independent film, which Brian De Palma made in New York in 1970, is an exuberant grab bag of diabolical whimsy that blends radical politics, sexual freedom, racial tension, and emotional hangups with the director’s own catalogue of artistic references, from Hitchcock and the French New Wave to cinéma vérité and avant-garde theatre—and adds a freewheeling inventiveness and an obstreperous satire all his own.

HI, MOM! is undisciplined in many ways, but where those better-known films [REAR WINDOW, PEEPING TOM, BLOW UP] are contained and thematically anchored around the implications of the camera and the relaying of what it captures, HI, MOM!’s richness comes from its scattershot, allusive approach.