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Heavy Traffic

1973 · 77 min

A grimy, surreal dive into 70s New York sleaze, mixing live-action and animation for a raw, uncomfortable, and darkly funny experience.

Tagline
More Spice from the makers of Fritz the Cat!
Overview
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.

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Buy in the UK
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  • YouTube
More options Data from JustWatch
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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • darkstrength 3 of 3
  • satiricalstrength 2 of 3
  • absurdstrength 2 of 3
  • bleakstrength 2 of 3
Pacing
measured, 2 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
demanding, 4 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • isolation
  • family
  • identity
  • class
  • sexuality
Places
  • big city
  • home
Era
contemporary
Audience
adult
Form
  • nonlinear
  • ensemble
Content intensity
  • Gore mild
  • Language strong
  • Violence strong
  • Sex strong
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action4
Horror4
Humour7
Realism6
Romance3
Tension6
Darkness8
Complexity7
Emotional weight7

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Where to watch in the UK

Buy
  • Amazon Video
  • YouTube

Streaming data from JustWatch.All options on TMDB

Details

Genres
animation, comedy, drama
Directed by
Ralph Bakshi
Written by
Ralph Bakshi
Starring
Joseph Kaufmann, Beverly Hope Atkinson, Frank De Kova, Terry Haven, Mary Dean Lauria, Jacqueline Mills, Lillian Adams, Jamie Farr
Music
Ray Shanklin, Ed Bogas
Cinematography
Ted C. Bemiller, Gregg Heschong
Runtime
77 min
Country
United States of America
Languages
English, Italian, Yiddish

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