Heavy Traffic is a 1973 American animated film written and directed by
Ralph BakshiRalph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
. The film, which begins, ends, and occasionally combines with live-action, explores the often
surrealSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
fantasiesFantasy in a psychological sense is broadly used to cover two different senses, conscious and unconscious. In the unconscious sense, it is sometimes spelled "phantasy".-Conscious fantasy:...
of a young
New YorkNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
cartoonist named Michael Corleone, using
pinballPinball is a type of arcade game, usually coin-operated, where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass-covered case called a pinball machine. The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible...
imagery as a
metaphorA metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for
inner-cityThe inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the lower-income residential districts in the city centre and nearby areas...
life.
Heavy Traffic was Bakshi and producer
Steve KrantzStephen Falk Krantz was a film producer and writer who was most active from 1966 to 1996.- Career :Born in Brooklyn, New York, Steve Krantz graduated from Columbia University and went on to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II as a second lieutenant.He worked as a...
's follow-up to the successful but controversial film
Fritz the CatFritz the Cat is a 1972 American animated comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi as his feature film debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States...
, the first animated feature to receive an X rating. Though producer Krantz made varied attempts to produce an R-rated film,
Heavy Traffic was given an X-rating by the
MPAAThe Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
. The film received positive reviews and is widely considered to be Bakshi's biggest critical success.
Plot
The film starts out in live action. We are introduced to Michael Corleone, a 22-year-old virgin playing pinball in New York City. The scene transcends into animation. New York has a diseased, rotten, tough and violent atmosphere. Michael's Italian father, Angelo "Angie" Corleone, is a struggling mafioso who frequently cheats on Michael's Jewish mother, Ida. The couple constantly bicker and try to kill each other. Michael ambles through a catalog of
freakIn current usage, the word "freak" is commonly used to refer to a person with something unusual about their appearance or behaviour. This usage dates from the so-called freak scene of the 1960s and 1970s. "Freak" in this sense may be used either as a pejorative, a term of admiration, or a...
s, greasers, and dopers. Unemployed, he dabbles with
cartoonA cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
s, artistically feeding off the grubbiness of his environment. He regularly hangs out at a local
barA bar is a business establishment that serves alcoholic drinks — beer, wine, liquor, and cocktails — for consumption on the premises.Bars provide stools or chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. Some bars have entertainment on a stage, such as a live band, comedians, go-go...
where he gets free drinks from the female black
bartenderA bartender is a person who serves beverages behind a counter in a bar, pub, tavern, or similar establishment. A bartender, in short, "tends the bar". The term barkeeper may carry a connotation of being the bar's owner...
, Carole, in exchange for sketches of the somewhat annoying Shorty, Carole's violent, legless bouncer devotee. One of the regular customers at the bar named Snowflake, a nymphomaniac transvestite, gets beat up by a tough drunk who has only just realized that Snowflake is a man in drag and not a beautiful woman. Shorty throws the drunk out and the bar's white manager abusively confronts Carole over this. Fed up with her manager, Carole quits.
Shorty offers to let Carole stay at his place, but not wanting to get involved with him, Carole tells Shorty that she's staying with Michael, and that they've been "secretly tight for a long time." Michael is turned on by her no-nonsense attitude and strong sense of self-reliance. This relationship also arouses his father's racist fury, as well as the jealousy of Shorty. Michael and Carole decide to move out of Michael's parents' house and try to earn enough money to move to
CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, in order to avoid Shorty. Michael gets a chance to pitch a comic strip idea to an old executive lying on his death bed, who seems enthusiastic enough to listen to the idea:
In a distant future following a nuclear war, the world is covered with garbage. Most of humanity has been either destroyed or mutated, though the men are still horny, and apparently horny enough that they don't care what they hump. A pile of garbage comes to life, as a result of a man humping it, and is worshipped as a religious figure, becoming known as "Mother Pile." The last living human female, Wanda The Last becomes a sort of sideshow attraction and tours the land with her duckbilled mutant manager, Warren. One night,
GodGod is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
speaks to Warren, asking Warren to let Him have sex with Wanda. Warren obliges, and Wanda gives birth to the new messiah. Throughout His son's life, Mother Pile searches for him, and although she crucified many men, not one of them gave her his location. Meanwhile, God gives His son lessons of "The Truth." The story ends after the son spends roughly three months meditating in a cave. After a shout of "I've got the Truth, Pop!" he shoots God in the head, who in turn topples over and crushes Mother Pile. The messiah then comes out of the cave, looks over at God's corpse, and says that the truth he received was that God had been conning them the whole time.
Michael's story is too much for the mogul, and dies during Michael's pitch. Meanwhile, Carole tries to work as a
taxi dancerA taxi dancer, or taxi for short , is a paid dance partner in a partner dance. For official purposes in the US, their occupation was referred to as "dancer", when they worked in taxi-dance halls that had all the necessary business permits...
. Michael acting as her manager, tries to pass her off as "the fourth
Andrews SisterThe Andrews Sisters were a highly successful close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia Andrews , soprano Maxene Angelyn Andrews , and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie "Patty" Andrews...
" ("'cause she was black, they kept her in the background"). A quick flash of her panties gives an old man a heart attack, and Carole gets fired. Meanwhile, Angie tries to use his Mafia connections to put a murder contract out on his son for "disgracing the family" by dating a black woman. The
GodfatherA godfather is a male godparent in the Christian tradition.Godfather may also refer to:*A male arranged to be legal guardian of a child if untimely demise is met by the parentsPeople:* Capo di tutti capi, a Mafia crime boss...
refuses to do this, because the hit is "personal, not business". However, Shorty eventually meets up with Angie, and agrees to do the contract.
Michael and Carole turn to crime as a means of getting by, with Carole taking the role of a prostitute. Carole flirts with a sleazy businessman, and brings him to a hotel room, where Michael beats him to death with a lead pipe. The two walk out into the pinball background with the dead man's cash. Just then, Shorty shows up and shoots Michael in the head. The bullet is seen going through his skull in slow motion. We see a kaleidoscope of shocking images and horrifying events before throwing back to the live action story. The "real" Michael destroys a pinball machine after it tilts, and walks out onto the street, bumps into the "real" Carole, and follows her into the park. The two are seen briefly arguing before they finally take each others hands and begin dancing in the park.
Cast
- Joseph Kaufmann as Michael
- Beverly Hope Atkinson
Beverly Hope Atkinson was an African-American stage, film, and television actress from the 1960s through 1991, known for her character work playing women down-on-their-luck or caught up in drug addiction.- Career :...
as Carole
- Frank DeKova
Frank Dekova was an Italian-American character actor.-Biography:Dekova was born in New York City and taught at a school in New York before joining a Shakespeare repertory group...
as Angie
- Terri Haven as Ida
- Mary Dean Lauria as Molly
- Charles Gordone
Charles Edward Gordone was an American playwright, actor, director, and educator. He was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and devoted much of his professional life to the pursuit of multi-racial American theater and racial unity.-Early years:Born Charles Edward...
as Crazy Moe
- Jim Bates - Snowflake
- Jacqueline Mills as Rosalyn
- Lillian Adams
Lillian Adams was an American stage and television actress with over 100 film and television roles to her credit....
as Rosa
- Peter Hobbs
Peter Hobbs is a British novelist.He grew up in Cornwall and North Yorkshire and was educated at New College, Oxford. He began writing during a prolonged illness that cut short a potential diplomatic career....
as Jerry
Production
In 1969, Ralph's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for
Coca-ColaCoca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
and
Max, the 2000-Year-Old MouseMax, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse was a Canadian animated television series produced by the late Steve Krantz, which originally aired in Canada in 1967 and became popular in several parts of the world, most notably the United States, where it was syndicated on both local and PBS stations between 1970...
, a series of educational shorts paid for by
Encyclopædia BritannicaThe Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
. However, Bakshi was uninterested in the kind of animation he was producing, and wanted to produce something personal. Bakshi soon developed
Heavy Traffic, a tale of inner-city street life.
Steve KrantzStephen Falk Krantz was a film producer and writer who was most active from 1966 to 1996.- Career :Born in Brooklyn, New York, Steve Krantz graduated from Columbia University and went on to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II as a second lieutenant.He worked as a...
told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund
Heavy Traffic because of its content and Bakshi's lack of film experience. Bakshi later directed
Fritz the CatFritz the Cat is a 1972 American animated comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi as his feature film debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States...
, an adaptation of
Robert CrumbRobert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
's
comic strip of the same nameFritz the Cat is a comic strip created by Robert Crumb. Set in a "supercity" of anthropomorphic animals, the strip focuses on Fritz, a feline con artist who frequently goes on wild adventures that sometimes involve sexcapades. Crumb began drawing this character in homemade comic books when he was a...
. The financial success of
Fritz the Cat allowed Bakshi to produce the film he had always intended to produce, and to focus on human characters rather than anthropomorphic animals. Bakshi pitched
Heavy Traffic to
Samuel Z. ArkoffSamuel Zachary Arkoff was an American producer of B movies.-Life and career:Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa to a Russian Jewish family, Arkoff first studied to be a lawyer. Along with business partner James H. Nicholson and producer-director Roger Corman, he produced eighteen films...
, who took an interest in Bakshi's take on the "tortured
underground cartoonistUnderground comix are small press or self-published comic books which are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality and violence...
", and agreed to fund the film.
Production began in 1972. However, Steve Krantz had not yet paid Bakshi for his work on
Fritz the Cat. Halfway through the production of
Heavy Traffic, Bakshi asked Krantz outright when he would be paid, and Krantz responded that "The picture didn't make any money, Ralph. It's just a lot of noise." Bakshi found Krantz's claims to be dubious, as the producer had recently purchased a new
BMWBayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...
and a mansion in Beverly Hills. Because Bakshi did not have a lawyer, he sought advice from directors he had become friends with, including
Martin ScorseseMartin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
,
Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
and
Steven SpielbergSteven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, asking them how much they made on their films. Bakshi soon accused Krantz of ripping him off, which the producer denied. Bakshi began pitching his next project,
Harlem Nights, a film loosely based on the
Uncle RemusUncle Remus is a fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881...
story books. The idea interested producer Albert S. Ruddy during a screening of
The GodfatherThe Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
.
While working on
Heavy Traffic, Bakshi received a call from Krantz, who questioned him about
Harlem Nights. Bakshi told Krantz: "I can't talk about that" and hung up. The next day, Krantz locked Bakshi out of the studio, reportedly tapping Bakshi's phone because he was wary of his loyalty as an employee. After Krantz fired Bakshi, he began to seek a replacement director for
Heavy Traffic, calling several directors, including
Chuck JonesCharles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
. Arkoff threatened to pull the film's budget unless Krantz rehired Bakshi, who returned a week later. During the film's production, Krantz attempted to maintain some level of control by issuing memos to Bakshi and other artists requesting various changes. John Sparey remembers being issued a memo asking Sparey to stop posting caricatures of Krantz on the middle of his door.
Ed BogasEd Bogas, born Edgar Noel Bogas, and sometimes credited as Edward Bogas, is an American rock musician and composer and whose work has been featured in films, animations, and video games.-Career:...
and
Ray ShanklinRay Shanklin is a composer. Along with Ed Bogas, he co-composed the scores for Ralph Bakshi's films Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic.-References:...
returned to write and perform the film's score, as they had done for Bakshi's previous feature,
Fritz the Cat. Other music featured in the film included the songs "
Twist and Shout"Twist and Shout" is a song written by Phil Medley and Bert Russell. It was originally titled "Shake It Up, Baby" and recorded by the Top Notes and then covered by The Isley Brothers. It was covered by The Beatles with John Lennon on the lead vocals and originally released on their first album...
," performed by
The Isley BrothersThe Isley Brothers are a highly influential, successful and long-running American music group consisting of different line-ups of six brothers, and a brother-in-law, Chris Jasper...
, "
Take Five"Take Five" is a jazz piece written by Paul Desmond and performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet on their 1959 album Time Out. Recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studios in New York City on June 25, July 1, and August 18, 1959, this piece became one of the group's best-known records, famous for its...
," as performed by the Dave Brubeck quartet, and
Chuck BerryCharles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
's "
Maybellene"Maybellene" is a song recorded by Chuck Berry, adapted from the traditional fiddle tune "Ida Red" that tells the story of a hot rod race and a broken romance. It was released in July 1955 as a single on Chess Records of Chicago, Illinois. It was Berry's first single release and his first hit...
." "
Scarborough Fair"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional ballad of the United Kingdom.The song tells the tale of a young man, who tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she...
" is used as a recurring musical motif, first heard in the film's opening credits and later reappearing during the end of the film as performed by
Sérgio MendesSérgio Santos Mendes is a Brazilian musician. He has released over thirty-five albums, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk....
and Brazil '66. Bogas also created several other arrangements of the song that appear throughout the film. A
soundtrack albumThe Heavy Traffic OST is the soundtrack to Ralph Bakshi's 1973 film Heavy Traffic. The film's score was performed by Ed Bogas and Ray Shanklin. The soundtrack album was released on Fantasy Records in 1973...
was released in 1973.
Directing
Inspiration for the film came from
penny arcadePenny Arcade may refer to:* Penny arcade, a venue for coin-operated devices* Penny Arcade ** Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, a series of video games based on the webcomic...
s, where Bakshi would often spend his time playing
pinballPinball is a type of arcade game, usually coin-operated, where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass-covered case called a pinball machine. The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible...
, sometimes bringing his 12-year-old son Mark. Bakshi wanted to use pinball as a metaphor to examine the ways of the world.
Heavy Traffic began a tradition in which Bakshi would write poems before beginning production on each of his films, starting with
Street Arabs. According to Bakshi, "My background was in
BrooklynBrooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
— my Jewishness, my family life, my father coming from Russia. All these things had to be somehow represented on film."
Because Bakshi wanted the voices to sound organic, he experimented with improvisation, allowing his actors to
ad libAd libitum is Latin for "at one's pleasure"; it is often shortened to "ad lib" or "ad-lib"...
during the recording sessions. According to James Bates, the voice of Snowflake, "I said, 'How about a little
Wolfman JackRobert Weston Smith, known commonly as Wolfman Jack was a gravelly voiced US disc jockey who became famous in the 1960s and 1970s.-Early career:...
,
Charles Nelson ReillyCharles Nelson Reilly was an American actor, comedian, director and drama teacher known for his comedic roles in theater, movies, children's television, animated cartoons, and as a panelist on the game show Match Game....
,
Pearl BaileyPearl Mae Bailey was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968...
and a little
Truman CapoteTruman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
?' Ralph couldn't believe it. We ad-libbed a lot, and he usually got what he wanted in three or four takes. We worked hard and not for much coin, but it was a blast."
As with
Fritz the Cat, Bakshi and Johnnie Vita took location photographs for the film's backgrounds. Instead of tracing the photographs onto backgrounds, as they had done in
Fritz the Cat, the film uses actual photographs and live-action stock footage as backgrounds for much of the film. Bakshi and Vita were also experimental in their photography: Bakshi requested that the lab technicians produce several prints for every photo, each print increasingly out of focus, giving the backgrounds a fuzzy quality. Bakshi states that "We didn't want to risk shooting [out of focus] on the spot. That could have meant making some expensive mistakes."
Animation
According to animator Mark Kausler, Krantz was so nervous about showing too much nudity and sexual activities that he had several versions of some sequences animated, for instance, in the "Maybellene" animation sequence. Kausler says that a sequence was animated in which the viewer sees "the key in the ignition metamorphose into a penis entering Maybelline's vagina." This sequence was deleted from
Heavy Traffic, but the same action appeared in the film
Down and Dirty Duck. Kausler also states:
"I covered this scene with another one of the key changing into the fat black guy, and the ignition slot turning into Maybellene. I covered a lot more cartoony foreplay scenes with a simple close-up of the fat black man's face with his hand covering his eyes. You can get a sense of how many scenes had to be altered, by how many times this close-up drawing was used. It got used a lot! At one point the original version "A" of Maybellene existed. Ralph had a print of it, but I have not seen it since I worked on it. We did versions "A," B" and "C," with "C" being the tamest and that is what got into the so-called "X" version of Heavy Traffic. Another scene I can recall doing multiple versions of was the guy in the racing cap, pissing on the fat black guy's ass. This was completely eliminated, causing a jump in the action."
Edward HopperEdward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
's painting
NighthawksNighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is considered Hopper's most famous painting, as well as one of the most recognizable in American art...
was used as a background in one of the film's sequences. Several animation sequences appear as rough sketchbook pages, including a dream sequence influenced by the work of
Otto MessmerOtto James Messmer was an American animator, best known for his work on the Felix the Cat cartoons and comic strip produced by the Pat Sullivan studio....
, and a
George HerrimanGeorge Joseph Herriman was an American cartoonist, best known for his classic comic strip Krazy Kat.-Early life:...
-influenced sequence set to
Chuck BerryCharles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
's "
Maybellene"Maybellene" is a song recorded by Chuck Berry, adapted from the traditional fiddle tune "Ida Red" that tells the story of a hot rod race and a broken romance. It was released in July 1955 as a single on Chess Records of Chicago, Illinois. It was Berry's first single release and his first hit...
".
Response
Although
Heavy Traffic received an
X ratingIn some countries, X is or has been a motion picture rating reserved for the most explicit films. Films rated X are intended only for viewing by adults, usually legally defined as people over the age of 17.-United Kingdom:...
from the
Motion Picture Association of AmericaThe Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
, more theaters were willing to screen adult-oriented animated features because of the success of
Fritz the Cat, and
Heavy Traffic was a box office success. Ralph Bakshi was the first person in the animation industry since
Walt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
to have two financially successful films back-to-back. The film is considered to be Bakshi's biggest critical success.
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
wrote that the film contained "black humor, powerful grotesquerie and peculiar raw beauty. Episodes of violence and sexuality are both explicit and parodies of flesh-and-blood porn [...] a celebration of urban decay."
Charles Champlin wrote in
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that the film was "furious energy, uncomfortable to watch as often as it is hilarious."
The Hollywood ReporterFormerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
called it "shocking, outrageous, offensive, sometimes incoherent, occasionally unintelligent. However, it is also an authentic work of movie art and Bakshi is certainly the most creative American animator since
DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
." Film website
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 88%.
Vincent CanbyVincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
ranked it among his "Ten Best Films of 1973". The film was banned by the film censorship board in the province of Alberta, Canada when it was originally released.
Michael BarrierMichael Barrier is an American animation historian. Barrier was the founder and editor of Funnyworld, the first magazine exclusively devoted to comics and animation. It began as a contribution to the CAPA-Alpha amateur press association...
, an animation historian, described
Heavy Traffic and
Fritz the Cat as "not merely provocative, but highly ambitious." Barrier described the films as an effort "to push beyond what was done in the old cartoons, even while building on their strengths."
DVD
Heavy Traffic was released in a Region 1 DVD by
MGM Home EntertainmentMGM Home Entertainment is the home video and DVD arm of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-History:The home video division of MGM started in 1979 as MGM Home Video, releasing all the movies and TV shows by MGM. In 1980, MGM joined forces with CBS Video Enterprises, the home video division of the CBS television...
on September 5th, 2000.
External links
- Heavy Traffic at the official Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
website