Heavy Traffic

Infobox Film
name = Heavy Traffic

---

caption = Style "A" theatrical release poster.
director = Ralph Bakshi
producer = Ralph Bakshi
Samuel Z. Arkoff
Steve Krantz
writer = Ralph Bakshi
starring = Joseph Kaufmann
Beverly Hope Atkinson
Frank DeKova
Terri Haven
Mary Dean Lauria
music = Ed Bogas
Ray Shanklin
cinematography = Ted C. Bemiller
Gregg Heschong
editing = Donald W. Ernst
distributor = American International Pictures
released = August 8, 1973
runtime = 79 minutes
country = flag|United States
language = English
budget = US$950,000Solomon, Charles (1989), p. 275. "Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation". ISBN 0-394-54684-9. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf. Accessed March 17, 2008.]
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:21996
imdb_id = 0070165

"Heavy Traffic" is a 1973 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film, which begins, ends, and occasionally combines with live-action, explores the often surreal fantasies of a young New York cartoonist named Michael Corleone, using pinball imagery as a metaphor for inner-city life. "Heavy Traffic" was Bakshi and producer Steve Krantz's follow-up to the successful but controversial film "Fritz the Cat", 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 by the MPAA, although an edited version passed with an R rating a year after its first release.cite web |url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070165/alternateversions |title=Alternate versions for "Heavy Traffic" (1973) |accessdate=2007-03-31 |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |year= |month= |format= |work= |publisher=Internet Movie Database |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] The film received positive reviews and is widely considered to be Bakshi's biggest critical success.

Plot

Michael Corleone (Joseph Kaufmann) is introduced as a 22-year-old virgin playing pinball in New York City, in live action. This scene is then thrown 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 bickers and try to kill each other. Michael ambles through a catalog of freaks, greasers, and dopers. Unemployed, he dabbles with cartoons, artistically feeding off the grubbiness of his environment. He regularly hangs out at a local bar where he gets free drinks from the female black bartender, Carole (Beverly Hope Atkinson), in exchange for sketches, somewhat annoying Shorty, Carole's violent, legless barfly devotee. One of the regular customers at the bar, Snowflake, a nymphomaniac transvestite, who 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 and she 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 arouses his father's racist fury as well as the jealousy of Shorty. Michael moves out of his parents' house and tries to make a living, often failing. He gets a chance to pitch a film idea to an old movie mogul lying on his death bed, who seems enthusiastic enough to listen:

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, God 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 gives him a heart attack. Carole tries to work as a taxi dancer. Michael acting as her manager, tries to pass her off as "the fourth Andrews Sister" ("'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, but it seems that nobody wants to be a part of this until a jealous Shorty tells Angie that he'll take the contract. Michael and Carole turn to crime as a means of getting by, with Carole taking the role of a prostitute and Michael posing as her pimp, potential customers are set up, killed and robbed. Carole flirts with a businessman, and brings him to a hotel room, where Michael beats him to death with a lead pipe. The two walk out into the street with his cash, and Michael is shot in the head by Shorty. 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.

Production

quotation|Since my days at Terrytoons, I had been asking: "Why do we always pick up an animated character from the story department and try to do our best on it? Why don't we just do something that we really feel?"

My background was in Brooklyn—my Jewishness, my family life, my father coming from Russia. All these things had to be somehow represented on film.|Ralph Bakshi

Production on the film began in 1972, shortly after the release of Bakshi's feature film debut, "Fritz the Cat". According to animator Mark Kausler, Steve 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 animation sequence set to Chuck Berry's "Maybellene". 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."cite book |last=Cohen |first=Karl F |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America |year=1997 |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc. |location=North Carolina |isbn=0-7864-0395-0 ] This sequence was replaced for the final film, but eventually the same action was repeated in the film "Dirty Duck".

"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."

Music

Ed Bogas and Ray Shanklin 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," performed by The Isley Brothers, "Take Five," as performed by the Dave Brubeck quartet, and Chuck Berry's "Maybellene." "Scarborough Fair" 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 Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66. Bogas also created several other arrangements of the song that appear throughout the film. A soundtrack album was released in 1973. [cite web |url=http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog/soundtrackdetail.php?movieid=23466 |title="Heavy Traffic" soundtrack details |accessdate=2007-05-17 |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |year= |month= |format= |work= |publisher=SoundtrackCollector |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ]

Response

The film is considered to be Bakshi's biggest critical success. "Newsweek" 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." [cite book |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Review of "Heavy Traffic" |date=August 27, 1973 |publisher=Newsweek |location= |isbn= ] Charles Champlin wrote in "The New York Times" that the film was "furious energy, uncomfortable to watch as often as it is hilarious." [cite book |last=Champlin |first=Charles |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Review of "Heavy Traffic" |date=August 9, 1973 |publisher=The New York Times |location= |isbn= ] "The Hollywood Reporter" 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 Disney." [cite book |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Review of "Heavy Traffic" |year= |publisher=The Hollywood Reporter |location= |isbn= ] Film website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 91%. [cite web |url=http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/heavy_traffic/ |title=Heavy Traffic |accessdate=2007-01-02 |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |year= |month= |format= |work= |publisher=Rotten Tomatoes |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] The film was banned by the film censorship board in the province of Alberta, Canada when it was originally released. [cite book |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Variety |date=December 19, 1973 |publisher= |location= |isbn= ]

With "Heavy Traffic", Ralph Bakshi was the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films back-to-back. After its release, he ended his partnership with Steve Krantz and set up his own studio. According to Charles Solomon's book of animation history, "Enchanted Drawings", he opened it to develop a project called "Harlem Nights", with producer Al Ruddy from "The Godfather". That film would soon become the controversial "Coonskin" (1975), which Paramount eventually dropped, and independent company Bryanston would eventually acquire.

References

See also

* Heavy Traffic (soundtrack)
* List of animated feature films

External links

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* [http://www.ralphbakshi.com/films.php?film=heavytraffic "Heavy Traffic"] at the official Ralph Bakshi website
* [http://www.blaxploitation.com/m_8.html "Heavy Traffic"] at [http://www.blaxploitation.com Blaxploitation.com]