American Pop

The narrative follows one family across four generations. Zalmie flees Russia and comes to America; his father was killed there and the boy is left alone. He starts working in vaudeville. His son plays piano in the jazz years and falls in with criminals. That son's son makes rock music in the sixties and is lost to drugs. The last of them deals in the eighties and writes songs. Every generation works at music and none of them arrives where they wanted. Ralph Bakshi directs. The film dates from 1981 and is animated. Most of it was made by rotoscoping; the actors were filmed first and drawn over. Real songs of each period are used and the music is the spine of the narrative; the tracks set the era of each generation. Because of rights problems with the songs the film could not be released on home formats for a long time. The matter the narrative builds is failure being handed down; each generation starts where the last left off and falls in the same place. Bakshi is one of the few directors making animation for adults and this is among his most cited works. The ending is abrupt and the narrative offers no resolution. Who it is for: anyone curious about adult animation and the history of music. Who it is not for: the structure jumps, the characters are thin, and the rotoscoped look strikes some viewers as strange.