Description: "Heavy images, crazy violence, insanity verging on insecurity and brilliance" (Films & Filming)! Heavy Traffic, the second feature from writer/director Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat), combines a quick-edit pace, a frenetic story line and an array of eye-popping animation and live-action styles. "Powerful, raw and valid" (Los Angeles Times), this "remarkable blend" of filmic styles is a "hypnotic, life-giving experience" (The Hollywood Reporter)! Michael, a young artist who lives with his neurotic mother and two-timing father, escapes the absurd and often ugly side of life on New York's tough streets by satirizing its rich yet wacky characters in wildly entertaining cartoons. From the gruff homeless and wisecracking prostitutes to gun-toting gangsters and corrupt cops, Michael's world becomes an outlandish kaleidoscope of shocking images and horrifying events that are either a testament of his wild imagination or a reminder of the strangeness of reality.
Amazon.com: Heavy Traffic is writer-director Ralph Bakshi's follow-up to Fritz the Cat, so if you're looking for a little something to watch with the kids, you might want to search elsewhere. It's an odd little movie, one that seems to both condemn and celebrate depravity at the same time. The hero is Michael, an artist who still lives with his battling parents. Michael is far too sensitive for the cruel city, though he sure seems to draw an awful lot of pictures of it. Michael hooks up with cool bartender Carole and the two of them set off to... well, they plan to do something. More engaging than the story are Bakshi's visual techniques, which include blending animated and live-action sequences and layering old film clips into cartoon backgrounds. Though interesting as a piece of animation, Heavy Traffic is difficult to recommend. There is a running thread of misogyny that makes the film off-putting, to say the least. Yes, all of the characters are unpleasant and yes, most of the violence is over-the-top enough to make a case for it being comic. It is the constant, casual misogyny that's unsettling--at one point Michael backhands Carole across the face and everyone, including Carole, seems to be fine with that. Keep an ear out for Jamie Farr and watch it for the animation, not the plot. --Ali Davis
Worth viewing as an animation oddity, nothing more, unless its nostalgia speaks to you. After the success of "Fritz the Cat", celebrated animation director Ralph Bakshi turned his adult-oriented animation style to something a bit more personal with 1973's "Heavy Traffic". The film follows Michael Corleone, a young, underachieving cartoonist living with his violently battling parents in a rough part of the city. When he is at home, he must put up with his Italian mob-involved father and his coddling Jewish mother literally attempting to kill each other, so he spends a lot of time wandering the streets and getting into odd situations by hanging out with seedy people at seedy bars and being harassed by locals about his virginity. When he takes up with an attractive black girl who has been fired from one of those clubs, his racist father puts a contract out on his life for shaming the family. While that seems like it could be a solid plot on paper though, it doesn't play out into very much onscreen. There is little added to the story than what I've just told you. No real twists, nothing really interesting besides Bakshi's expected bizarre visuals, which are really what Bakshi's more doodly films, like this, are worth watching for I suppose. Though, personally, the clashing of Bakshi's far too doodly animated characters with real world imagery comes out looking far too messy for my tastes. We're not talking "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" here.
Of course, the film is clearly a look at the ugly, gritty, dark side of urban life. How hard and violent it is, how you get bounced around (there is a big pinball machine metaphor played out with live-action footage that weaves in and around the animation), how much hatred there is between groups of people and how some folks struggle (apparently unsuccessfully) to rise above it. It shows both a nostalgic love and a disdain for urban life, which is truly portrayed without pulling any punches (be prepared for racially offensive language and generally offensive visuals). It's all best seen as a work of pop art reflecting its time and source, not just in its unique look but over all. It works in that sense, though still is not my cup of tea, but I don't really feel it works as a movie. I can appreciate a simple story, but this one still didn't really seem like a sufficient story as I watched it, I've never really been a fan of Bakshi's wild and unnecessarily raunchy or violent doodles that seem to serve little purpose or be too over the top to be effective when they are making a point, and the whole live-action wraparound only made the film's story more confusing, leaving one wondering if it was all imagined by the live-action Michael or if it was a vision of things to come, or what. Bottom line, it works as a work of art, but not as a piece of storytelling, and since it seems to be trying to be both, I would only consider it partially successful and not appealing to my personal tastes at all really.
Regardless, it's good to see this one on DVD, as I personally feel everything should be available on DVD. It is only in fullscreen though, and there is only one extra, but it's a good one. The extra is the theatrical trailer, and theatrical trailers for this kind of film from this era are very interesting to watch. Despite the low number of stars I'm giving this film (sorry, it just didn't do much for me except as an animation oddity), I would recommend it for true animation aficionados to have in their collections since it is a part of animation history. But, if you don't care about that sort of thing, don't bother with it unless you just like raunchy, wild animation.
Satisfied Well this product was packaged well and came in a good time frame. The dvd played well and I am satisfied. Thanks Sphinx
One of the best... and Bakshi's best by dane youssef
This is rumored to be animation-pioneer Ralph Bakshi's favorite among all his projects. And no wonder. This is his story!
A 22-year old Jewish-Italian spends his time playing pin-ball non-stop and drawing. He still lives with his parents, an Italian man who cheats on his wife and a Jewish woman who's so emotionally torqued up--such a drama queen, that when Angelo comes home after a night with his lady, she hits him over the head with a frying pan and sticks his head in the oven.
There's always domestic unrest in any family, particularly with interracial married couples who lived in the Bronx around this time. But they're so wound-up, so ready to snap--they come to blows and sharp instruments a little too quickly.
Way too quickly, in fact. Angelo and Ida's Punch-and-Judy relationship--coupled with the problems that reside outdoors in the Bronx--Michael seems doomed to have some of it rub off on him. "You hang around garbage long enough, you start to stink," as they say.
But Michael has an outlet for his angst and confusion. Rather than fall into the trap many around him seem to, he vents himself at the drawing board. He draws a lot of the people and places in the Bronx. Although he seems to dislike many of them, they're so broad and colorful and wired, they translate easily to caricatures.
Bakshi takes us to all the usual haunts we visit in his movies--trashy ghetto neighborhoods with buildings that look condemned, dirt-cheap apartments, behind the wheel of cars, rooftops, nightclubs, bars, brothels.
The lives of all of the Bronx inhabitants: Jews, Italians, blacks, drag queens, junkies, vagrants, hookers, cops, thugs and the like. And by using animation, Bakshi (and Michael) sort of illustrate their world and their eccentricity, which is so dangerous, it borderlines on insanity.
I wasn't particularly crazy about the disco remix of "Scarborough's Fair." What can I say? I fell in love with the original.
But I suppose it does fit in with the nature of the film. Bakshi uses a lot of shots of Michael playing pinball. He's a big pinball fanatic. It's obviously a metaphor, perhaps for the hectic universe in which Michael bounces from one scenario to another, for which he's constantly out of place.
Carol is a black woman who works at a local bar where Michael draws on the roof. She's loud, she's opinionated, she's passionate. And she really seems to be about something. She's not just an ethnic joke.
Like all bars, there are lots of colorful locals there, plenty of dangerous ones to be sure.
Michael tries to score free drinks with his art. But that's all he tries to score Michael's no ladies' man and he knows it. He's a deep, sensitive, skilled artiste. And a sitting duck for some of the louder, tougher guys who make up the city.
It doesn't help matter that he's a virgin and everyone knows it. At one point, some greasers try to hook him up with a loose woman who's eager to have it with a guy who's so fresh and green. Although this leads to a disaster. Even his own father tries to hook him up. Now there's a true loving father for you.
Michael has an eye for Carol (many people at the bar she tends do), not because he's dying to get laid like nearly every other male. But he seems to genuinely feel something real for her. When she offers it up to him in gratitude for a favor, he faints. He wants her, but he's just not ready.
Ida is fussy and over-protective of her son, just like a mother hen. Or rather a Jewish mother. Angelo wants his son to be more of a "man's man."
Like all of Bakshi's films, this contains a lot of graphic violence and sexual images, as well as caricatures in the ethnic vein.
But surprisingly, in the strangest way, it contains real heart, as well as some sweetness. The relationship between Michael and Carol has to be seen. Bakshi could've made her just an archetype like everyone else and he didn't. She's just as developed and human and relative as dear Michael is. These two deseve one another.
"Heavy Traffic" is wildly imaginative and thrilling in all it's glory. Like "Being John Malkovich," we actually feel like we're inside the author's head rather than his film. This truly ranks as Bakshi's best. He deserves more credit for this than "Fritz The Cat."
How much of all this take place in Michael's mind and how much of it takes place in his reality? Maybe they're one and the same. Maybe not. Maybe we're supposed to figure it out. It up to us. Just like Michael's life is up to him.
The characters in the city are so damn cartooniSH and erratic already, they transfer them into cartoon characters without losing anything in the translation.
Bakshi doesn't paint a pretty picture of the city and it's locals. But then again, he never has, has he? That's one of the things he's known for.
But that's not the only thing. Let's hope that when he goes... he'll be remembered for a lot of things.
Especially this one. It is... not only his best, not only one of the year's best... but of the best.
Memorable for all the wrong reasons Bakshi did a lot of crap; this is some of it. Cheap, vulgar and really crude, HEAVY TRAFFIC is important for its rancid look at a time when we thought films like JOE defined us as Americans. How on earth did Bakshi get funding to keep doing minimally viewable goobers like this?
Plot: low-life punk draws and shelps around the pre-gentrified Times Square with a bad jones for a black streetwalker. Lots of film stock used to suplement the bad animation, it tries to be something, but in 2007 terms, it all just looks like a bad dream. Were the 70s really all this tacky?
This played one of Chicago's old downtown "raincoat" movie pits that regularly ran junkie/wino blaxploitation and Russ Meyer lowlife grindhouse (EQUINOX!). It may've seemed funny to us as young punks at the time, but HEAVY TRAFFIC is an ode to portraying the worst of us in the worst of ways: crude, loud, and grimy.
I think I had to buy it to convince myself that there really wasn't anything redeeming in ealy Bakshi after all.
A little bit o' personal history... Heavy Traffic will likely never receive the attention or respect it deserves as a piece of honest to goodness Americana. Like most of Ralph Bakshi's most personal work, it is rough hewn, obscene (though never pornogaphic) outrageous and damn honest. Along with Coonskin and Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic is about life in the 60's (in fact, taken together these three films form a kind of animated triptych). All three films are about revolution of one kind or another, personal or social, contain plenty of poetry, both visual and narrative and are more about life as we know it then the fantasy of life as we might wish it to be, which seems to be the standard for most animation today. Let's hope that eventually Ralph will get his due as a pioneer of animation.
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