Heavy Traffic

Made in the mid-70s, it's a West Side story told mostly in animation from the imagination of the lead character, Michael. While not my favorite style of animation, Ralph Bakshi does a pretty good job of conveying confusion and an overwhelmed sense of trying to fit in. The live action sequences and old film mesh with the cartoon aspects to give a visual punch to this. Having seen it on DVD, the trailer is very, very dated. A pretty good movie though. I'd recommend it, if you have the time.

A few previous critics of this work by Bakshi slam it for being "stereotypical" and thereby negative as a whole by implementing foul humor, language and at times even suggest that because it's a cartoon that it owes something to child-oriented animation. This is absolute pig swill. Bakshi's vision in Heavy Traffic is to present life on the streets as he knows it. His style is truly unique, overlaying animation onto real stills and film sequences to add to the New york flavor that exists throughout the film. An abusive Italian married to a worrying Jewish woman is part of our reality. Gays being abused and people having to worry about their jobs being taken by minority groups for less pay and benefits because they're more desperate than we are is part of our reality. Love regardless of skin color, and facing the consequences for it is SADLY part of our reality. By using animation, Bakshi is exercising his artistic abilities while setting it in times and themes he is familiar with. This film, along with the criminally banned Coonskin should be hailed as modern masterpieces not for their visual aspects, but for the truth lying beneath and his unabashed look at how life really is. Comparing this film to "Shrek" is like comparing the original Night of the Living Dead to the recent Dawn of the dead remake. Granted they're both horror, but they're lightyears apart and don't use any of the same effects techniques. One, like Heavy Traffic, was made for social commentary, whereas the remake, like Shrek, is merely for our homogenized entertainment values.

Heavy Traffic is only known by the hardcore Ralph Bakshi fan base and the occasional art house folk, but not by much else. Its probably due to its notorious stamp of an X rating and its inclusion of countless ethnic stereotypes that led to its obscurity. Don't be fooled, this is not a porno. It was only given the rating due to its raunchy humor, which back in 1973 was considered too edgy for the masses. It's no different than what Family Guy is doing now on network television. As far as the racism is concerned, it's brutal, but outdated. Every ethnic person In the film represents a familiar joke or stereotype of the time. Now, the movie itself is a triumph. Truly an underestimated piece of artistic genius from one of the greatest minds that has ever drawn a cartoon. Ralph pours his culture, anger, sadness, laughter and happiness into every frame of this film. Almost to a biographic extent. He considers it his favorite project, and its obvious why. From the music, to the animation, Heavy Traffic proves that its more than a cartoon, but a microcosm of urban life in the cruelest decade to live in it. If you can get past it's lack of political correctness, it's a great flick.

Heavy Traffic is a wild ride of a movie. It's not very accessible or intelligible but it's rather fascinating as one man's delving into his own history and imagination.

Doubtlessly a very personal movie. Sort of like 8 and a half if 8 and a half was made by a graffiti artist. A lurid and grotesque affair, itself like a piece of graffiti splattered on an inner city wall. It is deliberately unlovely in its caricature of urban life complete with racial stereotypes, italic mobsters and bizarre transsexuals.

There's not much plot beyond these episodes of life and that's the point. Gradually the film becomes more about two alienated individuals, a cool black prostitute and an unsullied Jewish Italian Cartoonist, transcending differences in ethnoreligious background to try and make something in this bleak world even if it means being as brutal as everyone else is. I feel the usage of stereotypic images of black people, gays, jews etc. Helps even a tolerant viewer break into the mindset of people at this place and time where the colour of your skin and whether you wore a cross, crucifix or a 6 pointed star meant everything about who you are.

There's a certain lyricism in the way the movie is handled; the way that one can try and find beauty of sorts even in the ugliest of back drops and that's what I like most about the movie; it's an artist genuinely putting a piece of themselves on the screen with less regard about how many people like it but who likes it. It's ambitious and stylized but strangely unpretentious about it since it does nothing in half measures where we meander from sordid realism to daliesque bizarrity with a kitsch twist.

The trailer was spot on: "it's funny, but it's not a comedy; it's animated but it's not a cartoon". That sums it up pretty well.

This didn't charm me the way some other of Bakshi's movies did but often a movie is an oblique view into the mind of the maker. Here we've had a chance to get more or less a full view.

I just saw this for the first time on DVD. It's an excellent transfer.

Heavy Traffic must've been controversial back in '73, and caused quite a splash. But I really don't see why. This is a case where, if the movie had been made completely as live-action, no one would mention it today. The rambling and sometimes incomprehensible plot, extremely stereotyped characters, and subtle-as-a-Mack-Truck "social commentary" would've consigned this to a celluloid footnote.

Some of the animated sequences are clever, but without a strong plot and good characters, I found them to be interesting, but not compelling.