Ok, my first follow up film from a previous post. My Brian De Palma tangent has taken me to this somewhat experimental, smutty, and I imagine pretty controversial in ye olde 1970, romp. De Niro attempts to break into the porn industry by making peeping tom style films which he records from his apartment. It's pretty silly and certainly has some funny moments especially as he trys to convince the porno boss to lend him some money. There is glimmers of hell-awesome Travis Bickle coming out in De Niro here too.
The second part of this ribald adventure finds De Niro getting into cahoots with a group of militant black actors. He is a minor character in the doco styled 'Be Black Baby' scenario. This is actually some pretty confronting stuff as the black guys paint their faces white and the white audience's black and then force them through a degrading experience where performance and reality is blurred. Beatings, rape, gunfire etc ensue. Why haven't I ever heard of it before? I don't know but I imagine it's probably your fault.
It has a bit of an ad-lib feel which is sometimes awkward but there's some interesting stuff going on here for sure. I'll have to check out 'Greetings' (1968) at some stage where De Niro plays the same character.
Be black baby, be black.
3/5
Man, do I like watching films. To 'enhance' the experience I'm going to spout on about films I see on this here blog. The goal is to get turned on to some good new (and old) stuff in the process. I encourage recommendations, opinions and good old what not.
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