FRITZ THE CAT

US, 1972, 79 minutes, Colour.
Voices of Skip Hinnant, Rosetta le Noire, John Mc Curry, Phil Seuling.
Directed by Ralph Bakshi.

Fritz the Cat was somewhat notorious in its time – an X-rated animation film.

Its director, Ralph Bakshi, had been working in television since the late 1950s. However, with Fritz the Cat he began a decade of significant animated films, adult themes directed for an adult audience. With Fritz the Cat he was co-writer with comic book writer, Robert Crumb (himself the subject of a significant documentary in 1994).

Fritz the Cat shows a rather lewd cat going through all the permissive motions of the hip-type characters of the 1960s, the free love era, experimentation with drugs, on the university campuses. The police are represented in the animation as actual pigs.

The film presents a tongue-in-cheek look back at the 1960s. It also enjoys itself, even indulges itself, in its breaking of permissive barriers.

Bakshi went on to make several very significant films during the 1970s: Heavy Traffic, Coonskin, Wizards, American Pop – and the animated version of the first part of J.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, this version of The Lord of the Rings was not commercially successful enough to raise the funds for a continuation. Audiences had to wait another twenty-five years for Peter Jackson’s epic.

Bakshi then went back to working in television.

1. The purpose of the film: entertainment, social comment?

2. The advantage of using animation? The quality of the animation – too Disney-like, or sufficiently ‘realistic’ to avoid distraction by too much stylised work.

3. The film purported to be a look at America in the 1960s. Did it show a realistic America? How much? A just estimate of life in the US in the 1960s? Or did this matter?

4. Who did Fritz the Cat the cat stand for? Typical America?

5. The significance of his encounter with the girls, their ‘in’ conversation with the crow about blacks and Jews? Pretentious or not? How were they exposed in their mouthing of truth in the orgy sequence? The comment in this sequence?

6. The orgy itself, its purpose in the film, blackness, crudity? Necessary or too crude? Disgusting or was it just funny?

7. The satire on the police – clever, subtle, just?

8. The meaning of the synagogue satire? As integral to the film, its meaning for a non-Jewish or non-American audience?

9. The sequence of the burning of the books? Well communicated?

10. The visit to Harlem, the style of African American life: poolrooms, fights, white attitudes? Big Bertha and Fritz’s leaving her to call on the revolution? The whites and the death of Duke? Was this well observed and telling comment on New York?

11. The impact of the car chase?

12. The trip across the US, billboards etc? Fritz’s inability to fix the car, the old farmer’s criticism of hippies?

13. The Hell’s Angels, how ugly? Drugs, sadism, revolution – Fritz caught up in this? His love for Harriet, blowing up the plant?

14. The finale – what did it say or offer? A solution or a copout?

15. Was this a cynical picture of the US or a well-observed satirical comment? Did it play with social ideas, show an awareness only to flee back into the comfort of hedonism? The treatment of sex, drugs, violence?

16. Did the stills in the final credits add to the impact of the film?