I think that I first saw "An American Tail" when I was about three. All that I interpreted was a bunch of scary-looking men on horses. Now that I'm old enough to understand the historical context, every part of the movie makes sense. The scary men on horses were cossacks carrying out pogroms against the Jews in tsarist Russia (in the movie, they bring cats to terrorize the mice). Thus, a family of Russian-Jewish mice immigrates to the United States in the belief that there are no cats in America. Meanwhile, a Sicilian mouse recounts the misdeeds of a feline mafioso, while an Irish mouse remembers the sad things that happened on the Emerald Isle.
Sure enough, there are cats in America. But much of what happens in the course of Fievel's search for his family in New York seems to be a representation of the overall immigrant experience at the time. The immigrants are forced to work in sweatshops under the most dangerous conditions, and gangsters are the best hope for protection. Bridget's calls for the mice to unite against the cats sounds like an allegory for labor organizing.
All in all, I recommend this movie. It was probably Don Bluth's most creative movie ever, and certainly a credit to Steven Spielberg. I suspect that it was one of the first cartoon movies to cast movie stars (Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Plummer) as opposed to professional voice artists like Mel Blanc. Definitely worth seeing.
Also starring the voices of Phillip Glasser, Amy Green, Nehemiah Persoff*, Erica Yohn, John P. Finnegan, Pat Musick, Cathianne Blore, Neil Ross, Will Ryan and Hal Smith (Otis on "The Andy Griffith Show").
*Nehemiah Persoff also starred in "Some Like It Hot", and appeared on a "Gilligan's Island" episode as a deposed Latin American dictator.
Sure enough, there are cats in America. But much of what happens in the course of Fievel's search for his family in New York seems to be a representation of the overall immigrant experience at the time. The immigrants are forced to work in sweatshops under the most dangerous conditions, and gangsters are the best hope for protection. Bridget's calls for the mice to unite against the cats sounds like an allegory for labor organizing.
All in all, I recommend this movie. It was probably Don Bluth's most creative movie ever, and certainly a credit to Steven Spielberg. I suspect that it was one of the first cartoon movies to cast movie stars (Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Plummer) as opposed to professional voice artists like Mel Blanc. Definitely worth seeing.
Also starring the voices of Phillip Glasser, Amy Green, Nehemiah Persoff*, Erica Yohn, John P. Finnegan, Pat Musick, Cathianne Blore, Neil Ross, Will Ryan and Hal Smith (Otis on "The Andy Griffith Show").
*Nehemiah Persoff also starred in "Some Like It Hot", and appeared on a "Gilligan's Island" episode as a deposed Latin American dictator.