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Origin of the underground artist, slouched with pencil and paper and surrounded by furies. "You still up drawing?" Ralph Bakshi's impressionistic urban smorgasbord, practically Studs Lonigan moved to the Lower East Side through a Rauschenberg overhaul. His stand-in is the callow cartoonist (Joseph Kaufmann) weaving in and out of animated reveries in an arcade parlor, an avalanche of grubby fantasies and remembrances over the course of a pinball game. The war at home, goomba dad (Frank DeKova) grumbling about "big respect in the neighborhood" and yenta mom (Terri Haven) wielding a hatchet emblazoned with the Star of David. The Godfather is one of the crucibles (il capo di tutti capi finishes his dinner after a hail of bullets, oozing blood and spaghetti sauce), the other one is On the Waterfront (engraved longshoremen set to "Polyushko Pole," the freed pigeon from the rooftops circles back with a load of crap). A glimpse of Jean Harlow in the empty theater, zaftig models in clown greasepaint at the garment factory, a connection at last with the bodacious black bartender (Beverly Hope Atkinson). Mooks and winos, crossdressers and street-corner philosophers, whizzing integers in the raucous tessitura. "Blinkin' lights shot to hell, fuck it all!" Coarse scribbles on faded photographs for Bakshi's hustlers, scrambling to escape the grime around them even as it fuels their carnal-artistic drives. Hopper's Nighthawks is acknowledged, Thomas Hart Benton's swirls are visible, "the nostalgia bag" otherwise is just another racket. Among the bravura sketches are a raunchy flipbook of Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" and a blasphemous fable culminating with a blast to the Holy Father's face: "You know, Pop, the truth is you've been connin' us all along." The return to reality prompts a nod to Masculin Féminin, and an invitation to the dance.
--- Fernando F. Croce |