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movie

1973 · United States

Heavy Traffic

Tonight at a glance

Runtime
77 min
Age rating
NC-17
Language
English
Country
United States

Why tonight?

  • Under two hours — there is still an evening on the other side of it.

The story

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.

  • virgin
  • sexual frustration
  • surrealism
  • urban life
  • marijuana
  • interracial relationship
  • pinball
  • sexual attraction
  • adult animation

The look

A few frames, chosen rather than collected.

The bill

Directed
Ralph Bakshi

Production

Rating
6.5 / 10 · 88 ratings
Studio
Steve Krantz Productions, Cine Camera, American International Pictures