Film

Heavy Traffic 1973

Directed by Ralph Bakshi

  • Animation, Comedy, Drama
  • 77 min
  • NC-17

More Spice from the makers of Fritz the Cat!

A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.

AnimationComedyDramavirginsexual frustrationsurrealismurban lifemarijuanainterracial relationshippinballsexual attractionadult animation

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Character

Open-ended, bleak and contemporary.

  • resolvedopen-ended
  • warmbleak
  • contemporarynostalgic
  • effortlessdemanding
  • contemplativerelentless

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