Greetings

Greetings (1968) is Brian De Palma's feature debut — a scrappy New York indie comedy you can watch online on iFILM, with a young Robert De Niro in an early screen role. Three friends are doing everything they can to stay out of Vietnam, and their methods say a great deal about the America of 1968.

Paul buries himself in psychology books, hoping to fail his draft physical on a technicality. His friends have their own consuming obsessions: one is tunneling deeper into Kennedy assassination theories, the other is documenting strangers through windows as a kind of artistic practice. De Palma shoots it loose and cheap, cutting like he has nothing to lose — French New Wave energy filtered through downtown Manhattan chaos.

As a portrait of countercultural anxiety before the antiwar movement hardened into something organized, Greetings has aged into a genuinely unusual document. Watch the film (1968) online on iFILM.