When American Pop debuted on February 13, 1981, critic Vincent Canby wrote in his review in The New York Times that director Ralph Bakshi “…continues to push animation techniques to the outer limits more frequently explored by filmmakers who call themselves Avant Garde, but who seldom are.”
Celebrating its 45th anniversary this month, American Pop is indeed a daring animated film that opens in the late 1890’s and follows several generations, chronicling the inception and emergence of popular music.
The film seemed very personal to Bakshi. He was born in Palestine, and his family came to Brooklyn. The film seems to reflect that – the story of a similar American experience, using music as the backdrop.
American Pop begins with newsreel footage and title cards to depict a woman and her son, named Zalmie, escaping Russia, after their village is attacked and burned by Cossacks, and the father, a rabbi, is killed.
Zalmie and his mother immigrate to New York City, where young Zalmie gets a job handing out flyers for a burlesque show. This is Zalmie’s first introduction to music. Through the rest of the film, we follow future generations of Zalmie’s family, including Benny, his son, a jazz pianist during World War II, and Benny’s son, Tony, who becomes addicted to drugs as rock and roll emerges. The story ends in current day, with Pete, Tony’s son, successfully launching his music career at a concert.
RALPH BAKSHI in 1981.
In 1981, Bakshi appeared on The Today Show with critic Gene Shalit and explained how the Rotoscoping process was used in American Pop (watch HERE).
Bakshi and his team of artists brought a number of powerful scenes to the screen in American Pop. These include one scene where Benny, while fighting in World War II, comes across a piano and is discovered by a Nazi soldier in a burned-out village, and another where a rock group performs Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love,” against the backdrop of news footage of the Vietnam War and rioting, along with psychedelic images.
American Pop is also a wall-to-wall music book, with songs ranging from “Maple Leaf Rag,” by Scott Joplin, to “Night Moves,” by Bob Seger, tracing almost 100 years of history.
From his debut features like the X-rated Fritz the Cat (1972) and Heavy Traffic (1973) to gritty sci-fi fantasies like Wizards (1977) and Fire & Ice (1983), Bakshi has always taken chances with the medium in each of his projects. Looking back 45 years later, American Pop is, as Mr. Canby stated, a film that truly pushed “animation techniques to the outer limits.”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
I remember renting this film way back. I liked it quite a lot, especially for the music. I think I would’ve chosen who crown of creation“ among the music included, representing the protest against the Vietnam war, but OK, it still sounds like an incredible film. I can only imagine the visuals! Perhaps some fine day we will get the ultimate BAKSHI set of films on Blu-ray, absolutely and completely restored. At least I’m hoping so.
Of Bakshi’s rotoscope-heavy films from his latter half, I think this is the one that actually works the best. Maybe because the episodic story structure works better here than the tortured script of LOTR or the slow pacing of Fire and Ice.
I remember seeing it on HBO in an afternoon around 1993. The rotoscope is OK and worked well for the film, but I doubt that the animation technique pushed anything or that it broke new ground. The story didn’t convince me and while the music is good and that made the film passable.
One of the more interesting things about American Pop is that the rotoscoping allowed Bakshi to bring some famous faces into his movie without actually bringing them into the movie. It has been a minute since I have seen the movie, but I seem to remember the first generation male has a strong resemblance to Henry Winkler, the second generation male looks like Sylvester Stallone, and the third generation male looks like John Travolta. I’m not certain who Little Pete is supposed to be, but I don’t think that matters much.
I happen to like the movie a lot. I thought that Bakshi’s process presented an interesting use case for filmmakers who wanted to produce something on a somewhat epic or heavy on special effects on limited budget could use rotoscoping as a more artistic and slightly more budget friendly way of producing it. Animators theoretically could be paid pretty well to do such projects and still not break the bank like a lot of 3D CGI projects do.
Richard Linklater KIND OF made that happen with Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly (I have no idea how well the animators were paid or if the custom software used to make it required a large amount of server time or production budget.)