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Heavy Traffic | Year: 1973 Classification: Classics (Silents/Avant Garde) Directed: - Ralph Bakshi Another Classic Bakshi Like Fritz the Cat and Bakshi's other works, Heavy Traffic moves into city life to show the darker side of America. Bakshi once said in an interview: "If Disney was going to animate for the middle class, I was going to animate for the guy on the street." Heavy Traffic is Bakshi accomplishing that. The film isn't just a social statement though, it also has a lot of creativity behind that. It opens with the live action version of our main character Michael playing pinball. Michael is a cartoonist, and as he asks questions to himself he slowly dives into his world...a world similar to the one he lives in now, but a caricature of themselves. Michael deals with his crazy mother, corrupt father, a relationship with a girl, and trying to get a job - a hard task as his ideas involve events such as God getting shot in the face with a shotgun. If you were offended or put off by the brashness of "Fritz the Cat" then you should give Heavy Traffic a try. The nudity and sex is still there, but on a toned down scale. The social satire and goofy humor is still there, and that just makes it all the more a good film. Bakshi considered this one of the top three best films he did (next to Fritz and Streetfight). It is deservedly so. All the world's a TOON .... I remember very well the effect this film had on me right after leaving the theater; everywhere I looked on the drive home, people looked like cartoons. In Heavy Traffic, animation artist Ralph Bakshi presents us with a look at life in the early 70s (late 60s?), city style .... and this city is gritty, not entirely pretty .... Michael Corleone (not the only reference to other popular films of the times) scribbles away at his drawing board while his Catholic father and Jewish mother wage Armageddon outside his door. He finds comfort and release seeing the world as an absurd, psychotic cartoon. Pretty much a loner, his main connection to the outside world is a black bargirl named Carol who works right downstairs from him and slips him drinks for his entertaining sketches. An unfortunate incident with a drag queen associate costs Carol her job, and she and Michael end up out on the streets together, since he can't seem to make ANY sort of job situation come together. They form a sort of hustling alliance, with him as her pimp, and they nosedive into dark urban realms of the quick buck and the inevitable personal compromises involved. All this is interposed with images of live city backdrops and numerous references to a pinball game. Ralph Bakshi's animated vision is a moving work of underground pop art which, despite limitations, was a groundbreaking achievement that pushed the frontiers of American animation thousands of miles. I can see the influence of this film (and Bakshi's work in general) on the likes of Matt Groening, Don Bluth, and yes, even parts of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Heavy Traffic is dark, rude and dangerous. At times it has an almost experimental feel, moving at a stream of consciousness pace more than any conventional narrative. Its portayal of characters is raw and extreme, has an exaggerated sort of believability to it. It also has the feel of a semi-autobiography, with its portayal of a creative misfit struggling against the odds for survival, if not personal validation. This very personal work goes places other animations of the time wouldn't even consider, was rated X at the time of its original release, and was re-released very shortly afterward in a lightly watered-down R-version. The recent DVD release appears to be a restoration of the original artwork, is a nice clean print, despite the full-frame format and mono soundtrack. It would be nice to see this touched up with a slightly refurbished soundtrack (it IS animation, after all); at the same time the compressed sound lends to the quaint sort of 70s feel to it, creating an air of nostalgia rivaling that of The Iron Giant. And these guys weren't even trying! My appreciation for this special film has not diminished over the years; indeed, I understand it a bit more as an adult. It captures the dark, skewed out, surrealistic beauty of the urban underbelly, delivers some nasty bellylaughs, shows us the world as an oversized cartoon arcade game, an crumb ripoff! i started liking this movie, i thought the pinball metaphor and wild characters and lifes a cartoon shiz could have worked out, if it werent for the fact that bakshi is thinly disguising himself and his own frustration as being an unoriginal "underground" cartoonist who caught on to the scene too late...if you like the depressing, gritty, wild, fastpaced style of this movie, check out the original master ROBERT CRUMB, toward whom bakshi is obviously seething with jealousy and riding anxiously on the coattails of...this is crap in noncomformity, and dont say i "didnt get it", i just think hes being hugely self-indulgent and this whole thing is an homage gone awry, lacking the wit, psychedelia, and pornographic brillinace that crumb could create so effortlessly.. Buy Heavy Traffic at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Heavy Traffic Search with the Priority Search Engine on Heavy Traffic This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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