An American Tail (1986)

 

An American Tail manages to take a dark episode in world history, the fleeing of the Russian Jews from the pogroms of the late 19^th century, and turn it into a strangely educational and even somewhat entertaining animated film aimed. It manages to do this by focusing not on actual humans, but instead emphasizing a family of Russian-Jewish mice, the Mousekewitzes, who live with the human family of Moskowitzes and experience an attack by cats while the humans have their lives endangered by Cossacks. Everyone, humans and mice alike, boards a ship for America, a land that has been the subject of a lot of tales over the years, including the of-repeated myth that there are no cats in America. In fact, there’s even an entire song sung by the mice on the ship about the viciousness of the different cats in different countries which expresses how happy they will be that they will no longer face that kind of threat in America. The little mouse who is the central character of the film, Fievel (voiced by Phillip Glasser), gets swept out to sea because he’s rather naïve and constantly exploring when he should be minding his parents. Believing Fievel has died, his family members continue its journey on the ship. However, Fievel still makes his way to America, specifically New York City, in a bottle. They all arrive at about the same time as the construction of the Statue of Liberty, and the statue plays a prominent role in a couple of lovely if overly sentimental sequences. Its unfinished nature meshes nicely with the idea that America had (has?) yet to grapple fully with all the promises that it holds for immigrants. During his search for his family, Fievel befriends a couple of mice, one of them an Irish anti-cat activist whose speeches give a nice sense of the rhetoric associated with reform movements common at the time. He also encounters Warren T. Rat, a con man who runs a gang of cats who wreak havoc on the mice community. There’s a rather silly subplot involving the mice trying to figure out how to rid the city of the cats by using an old folk tale of the Giant Mouse of Minsk, but really, most of the events in the second half (or so) of the film seem designed to bring Fievel and his family into proximity only to have them miss seeing each other. This being a children’s film, there’s no surprise when the happy ending occurs. Before the Academy established the Animated Feature Film category, most such films were relegated to nominations in so-called minor categories involving sound and/or music. An American Tail received one nomination for “Somewhere Out There,” which became a huge pop music hit for Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram. In the film, it’s rather surprising that the duet is between Fievel and his sister Tanya. Certainly, that song is beautiful, but my favorite is “A Duo,” a duet (what else) between Fievel and the cat who is supposed to guard him while the young mouse is under Warren T. Rat’s control, Tiger (voiced by the great Dom DeLuise), about all the things that they have in common. Ultimately, the blending of Russian, Italian, French, Irish, and other nationalities, of pigeons and mice, of so many disparate combinations, speaks to the ways that immigrants became Americans—at least, in part, through their contact with other people. It’s a nice lesson for younger viewers. The Bluth Studios, which released An American Tail, typically used a darker palette than Disney did at the time. The use of very rich colors in the film and the striking combination of those colors make for a series of beautiful images. And the animators were very clever at times, such as when they made the storm aboard the ship resemble Neptune (or maybe Poseidon). Really, though, it’s the empathy you feel for the lost child that determines whether or not you think the film is successful.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song (“Somewhere Out There”)