Gendai Yakuza: Hito-kiri Yota (Street Mobster) 1972

Ever since the advent of cinema filmmakers and the film going public have been complicit in elevating the gangster archetype to near mythic proportions. As far back as Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 classic American Western The Great Train Robbery all the way down to David Chase’s magnum opus The Sopranos, society has had a deep and almost parasitic relationship with gangsters and outlaws. Although we as a society value law and order above chaos and anarchy we all occasionally fantasize about letting it all go so that we can entertain our darker appetites. The American gangster film allows the movie going public to scratch an itch that would nonetheless end in either death or jail for anyone who dared attempt to challenge the status quo. We project ourselves onto the gangsters and outlaws we see on the screen and although we may sympathize with the protagonist, the audience does get a cheap thrill as they watch the outlaw hero meet there bloody demise. American audiences may love their rebels, but order must be kept and the status quo must not be irreparably damaged. In effect the gangster figure is worshipped more for the image it projects rather than the reality it inhabits.

Japanese filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku is a figure in cinema that could never be accused of valuing surface image above reality. In the 1960’s and 70’s he made a series of jitsuroku-eiga, documentary style yakuza stories, beginning in 1964 with Okami to buta to ningen (Wolves, Pigs and Men) and culminating with Hokuriku dairi senso (Hokuriku Proxy War) in 1977. During this 13 year stretch Fukasaku confronted, attacked, and demolished the image of the stalwart yakuza protagonist. His films were populated not with knight-errants on a mission to cleanse the streets; in fact his heroes were usually the villains you would find in earlier ninkyo-eiga. The Fukasaku protagonist was part of Japan’s forgotten class during the nation’s postwar economic boom. Suffering through Japan’s defeat in the Second World War and having to deal with the humiliation brought about through the Occupation the Fukasaku protagonist helped rebuild the nation’s economic infrastructure after the war but never got to share in its wealth.

Gendai Yakuza: Hito-kiri Yota (Street Mobster) was already part of a successful film franchise before Kinji Fukasaku had stepped into the director’s chair in 1972. The Gendai Yazuza (Modern Yakuza) series began in 1969 as an attempt by Toei Studios to reinvigorate the flailing yakuza genre by offering audiences gripping stories of postwar gang life. Each of the films in the series starred model turned actor Bunta Sugawara, a man who would become a major collaborator in Fukasaku’s films. For their first collaboration though Sugawara would step into the role of Isamu Okita, a low ranking thug in the city of Kawasaki. And as a way to distinguish his entry into the Gendai Yakuza (Modern Yakuza) series Fukasaku focused less on the dichotomy between giri and ninjo and more on the hypocrisy of everyday life in postwar Japan seen through the lens of a gritty crime drama. By devoting his film to telling the story of a chinpira, a petty street thug with no real power and no immediate affiliation to a specific clan, Fukasaku is indirectly declaring his allegiance not to the status quo but with the forgotten casualties during Japan’s race towards economic prosperity.

Bunta Sugawara’s portrayal of Okita, cinematically speaking, is a character that has one foot firmly planted in the past, harkening back to James Cagney’s bravura performance as Tom Powers in The Public Enemy, and the other foot pointed towards the future, specifically with contemporary gangster classics like Goodfellas and The Sopranos. Although the Japanese yakuza and American gangster exist in two separate worlds, with each group having their own distinct codes and rituals, both sub-cultures do require their members to sever their ties to legitimate society and pledge loyalty to their respective bosses. Okita overturns that tradition though by having no affiliation at all to anyone but himself. His personal philosophy can be summed up by a quote lifted directly from the film’s third act when, in an attempt to rally his gang together and continue fighting Okita bluntly points out that “Once a dog learns the taste of defeat, it never bites again.” This statement perfectly encapsulates the type of man Okita really is. In fact at the start of the film during one of Fukasaku’s signature photomontage sequences Okita, in voiceover narration, informs us that he was born on August 15, 1945, the day Japan lost the war. And anyone who’s seen a fair share of Fukasaku’s oeuvre can attest to just how important Japan’s defeat in the Second World War and the country’s subsequent Occupation figures into Fukasaku’s cinema. Films like the Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) series, Kimi ga Wakamono Nara (If You Were Young: Rage), Gunki Hatameku Motoni (Under the Flag of the Rising Sun) and Jingi no Hakaba (Graveyard of Honor) all deal, in varying capacity, with the atrocities perpetuated by the Japanese during the Second World War and the fallout after the country’s defeat.

In many ways Okita is the prototypical Fukasaku protagonist. Not just because the actor playing him, Bunta Sugawara, would become synonymous with the jitsuroku-eiga genre that Fukasaku had helped establish, but because like all Fukasaku protagonists Okita is an angry young man lashing out at a society that would rather sweep all of its social problems under the rug rather than deal with them. Just as Cagney’s Tom Powers clawed his way out of the immigrant ghetto slums through the use of brute violence Okita also sees no other way to get what he wants except through intimidation and force. The main difference though between Cagney’s Prohibition-era antihero and Sugawara’s postwar outlaw is that The Public Enemy was a social commentary film made to attack the American government’s ridiculous attempt to curb alcohol consumption within its borders. The film accomplished this task by having a charming and likable actor portraying a psychopathic criminal that represented all the violence, corruption, and death that Prohibition wrought on the entire country. Thus American audiences were in a constant state of flux, between attraction and revulsion, whenever Tom Powers appeared on the screen. Okita, on the other hand, is a character that from the beginning we have no empathy for. He is a rapist, murderer, and bully with no real definitive motive for his actions. Even when Okita gets the support of the Yato gang and is rewarded with some territory to control he grows uneasy with having to kowtow to another authority figure. This anxiety and listlessness within Okita’s personality seems only to subside when he’s fighting, and the root of all of this pent-up aggression can be seen as stemming from the moment of his birth; the day Japan lost the war.

The environment that Okita was born into was that of a defeated and starving country. And for many Japanese this traumatic event in their country’s history had not yet been fully dealt with; rather the issues of war crimes and the black-market days of the Occupation were things better left forgotten. Having been unable to fight in a war that would ultimately have a great influence on his own life; Okita’s belligerent attitude to any authority figure other than himself can be seen as a reaction to the new order in Japanese society which valued money over honor and survival over friendship. If Fukasaku’s later film, Jingi no Hakaba (Graveyard of Honor), was an attempt by the director to explore the psychopathology of the yakuza protagonist and the Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) series was an allegory for the geopolitical machinations going on not only in Japan but the entire world from the 1940’s all the way through the 1970’s then Gendai Yakuza: Hito-kiri Yota (Street Mobster) can be seen as an examination of the damaged Japanese psyche after the war as it dealt with the slow death of traditional values and the rise of Westernization.

The embodiment of this new Japan would have to be Boss Yato, played by reformed yakuza turned actor Noboru Ando. He is a man that, by his own admission, was just like Okita: angry, violent, and hungry for power. The main difference though between the both of them is that Yato has found a way to reconcile his personality with the new corporate sensibility brewing in Japan. Although Boss Yato does save Okita from the Takigawa clan on two separate occasions; the second time occurring after Okita suffers from an almost fatal gunshot wound; he is not really the stoic yakuza boss we believe him to be. The Yato clan’s alliance with Okita is predicated on the belief that the hotheaded Okita’s natural disposition towards trouble will result in the Takigawa clan’s dissolution. Thus, all of Yato’s altruism is really just a mask to hide his desire to take over the Kawasaki underworld. This is a recurring theme in many of Fukasaku’s jitsuroku-eiga; those at the top, in the case of Gendai Yakuza: Hito-kiri Yota (Street Mobster) that would be Boss Yato, use those at the bottom of the social ladder, specifically Okita and his punk gang of chinpira, to fight proxy wars for them. And when the battle is over and the dust finally clears there are no memorials for those who fought on either side; those who died will most likely be forgotten; the only evidence that they ever existed being a few charred photos, their names etched into a concrete wall, and a dark red stain on the ground.

Of course not everything in Fukasaku’s films is completely pessimistic. His treatment of male-female relationships is refreshing in that he doesn’t reduce the female “love interest” into the cliché role of girl-next-door or femme fatale. Instead, he creates female characters that are products of their environment not just their gender roles. Okita and Kimiyo are a fairly typical Fukasaku couple, their relationship hinging primarily on a victim-victimizer mentality. Kimiyo’s narrative arc begins with her as a victim of a brutal rape, coincidentally perpetrated by a gang of thugs that included Okita, after which her rapists sold her into prostitution. Her reunion with Okita finds her jaded and resigned to her lot in life and for the most part she has made the best of a very bad situation. It is only after she recognizes who Okita really is that her fire and spirit returns and she slashes at Okita with her pocket switchblade. Her hatred and indignation have finally boiled over, but when she finally confronts her attacker, in the abandoned building where she was dragged into and raped no less, she abandons her ideas for revenge. Kimiyo, confronted with the man who raped her and in the very place she was raped, has a quiet epiphany; anger and hatred just begets more anger and hatred. Instead of attacking, Kimiyo seduces Okita. And by having sex with Okita in the very spot where she was raped Kimiyo is reliving the trauma of her rape except this time she has the control; being both the initiator of the act and the object of Okita’s desire. Of course this doesn’t mean that Kimiyo and Okita live happily ever after. There is just too much stacked against Okita for him to ever have anything more than a few intimate moments with Kimiyo, but within those moments that he shares with her we are privy to the last dying embers of a man’s humanity.

Ultimately though what keeps cinephiles returning to Fukasaku’s films is his ability to marry avant-garde film techniques with tried and true genre conventions, and in the process creates, for the viewer, a visceral experience. When talking about Fukasaku’s work, especially his jitsuroku-eiga, it’s important to note how vital the documentary aesthetic plays in the visual style of his films. Gendai Yakuza: Hito-kiri Yota (Street Mobster) was shot on location in the city of Kawasaki and Fukasaku’s decision to not be studio bound allows audiences to get a sense of the world that Fukasaku is building within the film. In fact, there is a very newsreel like quality when watching many of his yakuza films, as if the viewer were tuning in to watch a broadcast news piece rather then a movie. Of course that’s not to say that Fukasaku’s style hinges on a detached objective viewpoint. You may not have any empathy for the people in his films but there is no shortage of pathos that an audience can feel for the disenfranchised masses that Fukasaku regularly sides with. Even though he castigates his yakuza characters for being cruel and cowardly he does imbue them with enough humanity to keep his protagonists from devolving completely into archetypical genre behavior. Just as Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets was a film about what that director saw on a day-to-day basis in his neighborhood in Little Italy, Gendai Yakuza: Hito-kiri Yota (Street Mobster) translated Fukasaku’s visual and aural experiences during the Postwar period into a bleak cinematic document of a time when innocent lives were blindly sacrificed to fuel an entire country’s economic growth. In Kinji Fukasaku’s films violence is not there just to titillate the audience; it exists because when you strip a person of love, compassion, and the everyday comforts we take for granted they will inevitably revert into something akin to a feral dog; vicious, territorial, and remorseless pack hunters. Sadly, as the have-nots grow to outnumber the haves Fukasaku’s films prove not just to be groundbreaking genre works but a prescient indictment of consumerism, capitalism, and political corruption.

Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) 2005

The dividing line between adolescence and adulthood is quite precarious. As children, we have the ability to imbue everyday objects and occurrences with a magical aura just through the use of our imagination. And, with our innocent little minds being the only tool we have to shield us from the harsh reality of our environment we are wholly dependent on those around us to nurture and guide us in the proper direction to adulthood.

Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) is a film about the trauma of death in all its facets. Be it parental death, the dissolution of a budding friendship, or the passing of childhood innocence Auraeus Solito’s film tackles these heavy themes through a simple, somewhat cliché, coming of age story. Maxi, the protagonist of the story, is an effeminate gay boy and yet it’s a credit to Nathan Lopez, the young actor who plays Maxi, that what we get is not another homosexual caricature but a multi-dimensional character. Maxi struts through the back alley slums of Manila proudly and you get the feeling that he isn’t just a character in a film but a living breathing vital part of his community.

Also, it’s a credit to Auraeus Solito’s direction and Nap Jamir’s camerawork that given the setting of the film instead of giving us yet another bleak and low-key lit crime story Jamir and Solito opt for a more natural look and use only available lighting to shoot their love story. There are shots of scum-infested ponds, vagrants, jeepneys, and street side food stalls but these things don’t have a purely negative connotation to them. Kids running and playing in the streets, a video store with a makeshift theatre playing DVDs for its customers, and the never ending plates of food being shared and eaten fleshes out this tiny corner of the world as a place not defined by the inherent poverty that afflicts it. In effect, Solito humanizes the Manila slums that he’s shooting and in turn humanizes its occupants.

Maxi’s family may not fit “normal” society’s agreed upon definition of what a nuclear family is, but it is a loving supportive unit of people. Paco, Maxi’s father, and his two brothers accept Maxi for who he is. In fact they don’t even make Maxi’s sexual orientation an issue. The only crinkle though in Maxi’s picture perfect home life is that his father and brothers are career criminals.

Maxi cooks, cleans, sews, and does the everyday household chores for his family with nary a complaint. With their mother dead since Maxi was a little boy he has taken on the role of mother figure by proxy. It’s interesting to note that Maxi’s mother looms heavily throughout the entire film. Be it the prominent shrine to her in their apartment, her dresses neatly folded in the closet, or the empty space when the family goes to sit down for dinner or lounge around while watching a movie. The mother’s presence can even be felt during Maxi’s attempts at cross-dressing; whether it's pretending to be in a beauty pageant with his friends or at home as he tries on his mother’s clothes and various accessories it is almost as if Maxi were constantly rehearsing for the role of matriarch.

The child-as-parent role reversal though is an interesting facet of the story that the screenwriter Michiko Yamamoto tackles with the introduction of Victor, played by J.R. Valentin, into the narrative. Victor, a police officer who saves Maxi from being assaulted by two street thugs, plays dual roles in the film. He is both a father figure and love interest for Maxi, but their relationship is much more complicated then that. Although Maxi is physically attracted to Victor, even stealing an innocent kiss on the cheek from him, his feelings for Victor are tangled up in his desire for a more positive role model in his life and also his budding sexuality, which yearns to experience love for the first time. Maxi admires Victor as the ideal romantic partner for himself, regardless of their age gap, but he also treats him as a surrogate family member; preparing him meals and taking care of Victor after he gets severely beaten up. Maxi’s obsession with films, dressing up, and playacting go hand in hand with his feelings for Victor because Victor represents the needed catalyst in Maxi’s life to correct the parent-child schism caused by having to be mother, son, and brother to his family.

Although he comes from a loving home Maxi is at the cusp of adulthood and is struggling for an identity of his own. Of course because he’s taken on the identity of caregiver for so long the only way Maxi can express his true feelings for Victor is by mothering him. Victor’s spell over Maxi is only broken after the death of Maxi’s father, Paco, because first of all it showed Victor to not be the hero that Maxi had imagined. And also, Paco’s death led to Maxi finally being able to relinquish the title of caregiver and hand over the job to his older more mature brothers. In effect, by film’s end Maxi can just be himself, wiser than he was at the start of the film, but still an adolescent with a few more years before he crosses the threshold into adulthood.

Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) is a neorealist melodrama that upturns the audience’s expectations of a coming of age story. The humanity that the actors and the director, Auraeus Solito, invest into the film makes it more like a documentary at times. And even after the credits roll it’s rather difficult to not try and imagine what Maxi and his family are up to. It’s a shame that today most films about adolescents pander only to lowbrow tastes.

Kanto Mushuku (Kanto Wanderer) 1963

“The way of the yakuza is to wear red clothes or white…”

If one were to make a clear distinction between the cinematic treatment of the American gangster and the Japanese yakuza it is that the American gangster story is centered on a rise and fall narrative structure whereas the protagonists in a yakuza film are torn between the very Japanese concepts of giri and ninjo. John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Tom Powers, and Tony Montana are characters defined by their greed, bloodlust, and eventual bloody demise. The American gangster is an entrepreneur fighting the status quo all in a bid to grab a piece of the American dream for themselves. The yakuza, on the other hand, is the perpetual loser of society. The term yakuza itself is derived from the losing hand in the card game Hanafuda. Be it a ninkyo-eiga or a jitsuroku-eiga the central conflict is always the same. A yakuza’s obligation to serve his oyabun will inevitably clash with there own innate humanity.

Pop Surrealist director Seijun Suzuki made a career of dissecting yakuza mythology in the 1960’s. Along with his main collaborator Takeo Kimura he reduced the parts of a yakuza-eiga into its base components and through the conscious use of artifice laid out for audiences the ludicrousness of the yakuza’s masculine code. Kanto Mushuku (Kanto Wanderer) was just one of a slew of ninkyo-eiga he directed during his creative prime in the 1960’s.

Adapted from a novel by Taiko Hirabayashi, Japan’s only female writer during the country’s proletarian movement in the 1920’s, there is an emotional sensitivity present throughout the film. Story-wise there is a heavy emphasis on romance and although the characters in the film are all still cut from the same yakuza cloth; unlike lesser films that pit a righteous hero against a despicable villain there really is no ethical high ground for any character to stand on. What you basically have in the story is Romeo and Juliet seen through the prism of a Japanese exploitation film.

Mitsuo Katsuta, played by heartthrob and singer Akira Kobayashi, is a rising member of the Izu gang. Like all true ninkyo-eiga protagonists he sincerely believes in the yakuza code. This knight-errant looks out for his boss’s daughter, cleans up the mess caused by sleazy gangster and friend Tetsu, and protects and defends his boss’s territory from the rival Yoshida gang. The only vice he allows himself is a passionate but chaste relationship with Tatsuko Iwata (Hiroko Ito), a gambler and sister to Diamond Fuyu of the Yoshida gang. Suzuki uses Katsuta’s relationship with Tatsuko to parallel Katsuta’s own blind devotion to Boss Izu and his gang. The film likens the oyabun-kobun relationship to that of a childish crush. Katsuta, Tetsu, and even Diamond Fuyu are all little boys who’ve fallen in love with the ideals of the yakuza code. It’s no coincidence that Suzuki opens his film not in the middle of a gambling hall or within the company of bakuto gamblers but with a group of young women.

These women, virginal Tokiko (Chieko Matsubara) and free-spirited Hanako (Sanae Nakahara), are completely oblivious to what the yakuza really are. Even Tokiko, whose father is the boss of the Izu gang, can seem utterly blind to what sortof organization her father is really running. Her innocence can seem laughable at times. And not only that but Tokiko’s schoolgirl crush on Katsuta is predicated mainly on a superficial attraction to his boyish good looks. And as for Hanako, problems at home with her father and new stepmother have led her to rebel against the traditional patriarchal society. Yet her ignorance has reduced her rebellion into a means to exploit her. Hanako’s naivete is clearly evident in the way she unquestionably follows Tetsu to a train station and is completly oblivious of his intentions to have her sexually proposition men for money.

By reducing the yakuza characters in the narrative to something akin to naïve post-adolescents Suzuki attacks the ingrained belief that the yakuza are some noble class of warriors. To Suzuki, the yakuza are nothing more than just wayward children attracted to the ideals of the yakuza code but are still far too immature to be able to comprehend what it means to truly live and die for those beliefs. In fact by illustrating the disparity in the way a yakuza’s personal relationships often clash with the masculine codes which govern how all yakuza must behave Suzuki shows us just how far from reality the yakuza code really is. Thus, although Kanto Mushuku (Kanto Wanderer) may seem at first like just one of the many run-of-the-mill ninkyo-eiga being churned out in the 1960’s it is only superficially so. Underneath all the genre machinations in the story the film is really a seething critique on Japan’s fascination with the yakuza.

Hanako’s eventual fate as a prostitute mirrors the predicament that Katsuta and Diamond Fuyu find themselves in the film. All three are in love with the “outsider status” that Japanese society places on both prostitutes and yakuza. Their association with either caste allows them a freedom that wouldn’t be possible if they had chosen to conform to social expectations. The main difference though between the three is that by the end of the film both Hanako and Katsuta have relinquished their childish notions of the heroic rebel yakuza whereas Diamond Fuyu still blindly clings to the myth. Although Katsuta, by film’s end, is being sent away to jail after killing a few rowdy gamblers for the Izu gang the real tragic figure in the story is Diamond Fuyu. Unlike Katsuta, Fuyu kills not for honor but to win Hanako’s heart. Fuyu is so delusional that even after Hanako spurns his affections for her he starts begging her to wait for him and bragging about how much of a man he is. For Diamond Fuyu, killing is the final step to manhood while Katsuta views it merely as the occasional price a yakuza must pay for membership into the organization. Katsuta’s newly formed self-awareness may mean that there is a possibility that he can move on from his old life.

When speaking of Seijun Suzuki’s artistic brilliance one cannot forget that the visual flourishes that people credit as the Seijun Suzuki style would not have been possible without the work of the production designer Takeo Kimura. As always, in a Suzuki film the limitations of budget and story expectations have never gotten in the way of creating scenes that visually pop out at you. In Stephen Teo’s brilliant paper Seijun Suzuki: Authority in Minority the author goes into detail about how Suzuki uses the interior confines of traditional Japanese houses “as compositional devices to frame his shots. These geometric elements serve not only to tie the organic shapes within them into visually satisfying wholes, they also assist the audience in the interpretation of the relationships between characters and thus help the story along.” Teo connects Suzuki’s use of color and light in Kanto Mushuku (Kanto Wanderer) as visual signifiers for the character’s emotions. Although rightfully labeled as a cinematic director, Teo categorizes Suzuki’s work in Kanto Mushuku (Kanto Wanderer) with that of a stage play director due to Suzuki opting for a more stylized visual presentation rather than a naturalistic one. Or as respected film scholar Tony Rayns beautifully put it: ““Realism” evaporates as the film enters its characters’ memories and obsessions”

Although not as infamous as his other yakuza films, Kanto Mushuku (Kanto Wanderer) still deserves respect as a unique work from a true visual artist. The film challenges established notions of masculinity and group devotion while at the same time utilizing a well-established genre to experiment with the pop art aesthetic. Suzuki would make much more daring films after Kanto Mushuku (Kanto Wanderer) but even while practicing restraint there is no denying Seijun Suzuki’s visual genius.

Pauline Kael on Criticism

"I regard criticism as an art, and if in this country and in this age it is practiced with honesty, it is no more remunerative than the work of an avant-garde film artist. My dear anonymous letter writers, if you think it is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets."

- Pauline Kael

KPFA Broadcast

January 1963

Feed the Kitty (1952)

It’s not such a stretch to say that the bulk of early American animation has relied heavily on conflicts between anthropomorphized animal species; be it cat against mouse, rooster against chicken hawk, rabbit against duck, or dog against cat. The animated short is a universe populated by a whole host of cuddly critters, smart-alecky fowl, and street-smart rabbits. If you look back towards the history of Western literature it shouldn’t be a surprise to discover that since the days of Hesiod and Aesop, storytellers have relied on creatures, both wild and domesticated, as human surrogates when telling their fables or narrating their myths to an enthralled crowd.

Early American animation is primarily divided into two camps, Walt Disney studios and the Warner Bros. Cartoons, specifically the animators working at the aptly named “Termite Terrace”. Although there were a few other small studios churning out their own animated shorts at the time it is only the Disney and Looney Tunes shorts that have survived a century’s worth of pop culture rejiggering and still retained their commercial viability. The most famous animator working at Warner Bros. during that time was Charles M. Jones, often credited as Chuck Jones, whose oeuvre is replete with classic animated shorts, many of which have been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.

One of my favorite Chuck Jones shorts is a cartoon little known to the casual fan. It doesn’t star any of the big name Warner Bros. characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, or Porky Pig. The cartoon itself doesn’t exhibit any of the trademark Looney Tunes zaniness, and it would be a stretch to label the short laugh out loud funny. No, the seven-minute film that I’m talking about is a quiet unassuming tale about a bulldog by the name of Marc Antony and the little black kitten, Pussyfoot, that he finds one day.

Theatrically released on February 2, 1952 Feed the Kitty would be largely forgotten today if not for the efforts of a few devoted animation historians and Chuck Jones admirers. Unlike the typical shorts that Jones and the rest of the “Termite Terrace” animators did, there was no precedence to any of the characters in the film. Whereas when you watch a Bugs Bunny short you are watching the accumulated work of not just Chuck Jones but also Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin, and many more. Feed the Kitty is the sole creation of Chuck Jones and screenwriter Michael Maltese. Also, unlike the Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner shorts or the Sylvester and Tweety series the characters of Marc Antony and Pussyfoot only appeared in five films together, and so the formula never really had a chance to wear out its welcome.

What makes the film a classic though is that, first of all, it overturns the cliché animosity between cats and dogs. The relationship between Marc Antony and Pussyfoot can be seen in two ways. The first and most popular is the parent-child relationship. When Marc Antony first discovers Pussyfoot he cradles her in his hand. He dotes on her like a father would and even offers his furry back as a makeshift bed for her. This parent-child interpretation has led many people to consider the story as an allegory for the maturing effect that taking care of another life can have. Before meeting Pussyfoot the character of Marc Antony is an immature boy. His toys are scattered around the house, he struts around the neighborhood without a care in the world, and even tries to scare Pussyfoot during their first meeting. It is only when he begins to care for someone other than himself that he makes the leap to adulthood.

Of course this is only one interpretation of the film. Chuck Jones saw the narrative not as a parent-child story, but rather as a romance. When asked about this specific animated short in a 1975 Film Comment interview conducted by Greg Ford and Richard Thompson, Jones replied “The dog starts out pugnaciously with the cat, but then runs the entire gamut of a relationship with anyone. It’s like with a girl, you know, when you first meet her then gradually it gets so that you can stand her and then you fall in love with her and then you become obsessed with her and fear that she’s gonna die or something.” This romantic interpretation of the film relays the maturity in Jones work. He may have been working in an industry that catered predominantly to children, but that didn’t mean that the work he was doing was childish.

Instead of relying on pop culture references and clever wordplay to get laughs the entire cartoon plays like a silent film. In fact there is something very Chaplinesque about Feed the Kitty; a sentimentality that pervades the entire story but because of the sincerity that Jones imbues in the Marc Antony character there is never a danger that the laughs and tears won’t be well-earned. Also, possibly as a nod to Disney both characters in the short are drawn in a cute style; especially Pussyfoot who resembles an infant in both behavior and size.

The biggest stylistic nod to Disney though would have to be the film’s reliance in the characters eyes to emote a wide range of emotions. Modern animators today may have a plethora of gadgets and software that help them turn two-dimensional drawings into near perfect simulacra of everyday objects and people, but this obsession with creating an accurate three-dimensional illusion has turned the art of animation into a petty contest to see who’s got the flashier looking toy. In Feed the Kitty Jones does not even bother to give the audience the illusion of three-dimensionality. The backdrop for the action looks quite artificial as if Chuck Jones were drawing not a real house and lawn, but the movie set equivalent of one. This bare-bones approach to animated set design doesn’t call attention to itself though. In fact, as talented as Chuck Jones was his great skill lay not in having a distinctive drawing style, but rather an ability to adapt his talent for drawing to fit into whatever story he was telling. And in Feed the Kitty what were important to Jones are the characters. The simplicity in their design focuses your attention not so much on the illustrative qualities of the work but on the content of the story. In several interviews Jones has always mentioned his devotion to studying the great masters like Goya, Da Vinci, Claes Oldenburg, and Beatrix Potter. And in his memoir Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist he makes it explicitly clear that the one thing that unites all great artists is their “ability to live by the single line – that single honest delineation of the artist’s intent. No shading, no multiple lines, no cross-hatching, no subterfuge. Just that line. Was it Feininger or Kandinsky who said, “My little dot goes for a walk?” Just so; every point on a line is of equal importance. That is rule 1 of all great drawing.”

This simplicity in his drawing style doesn’t mean that Jones was incapable of appreciating the eye-popping frenetic style of a Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin short. In fact in later animated films like Duck Amuck and What’s Opera, Doc? Jones embraces the contained chaos of surrealism and expressionism. In Feed the Kitty though Jones downplays the animation and opts to devote his pen to telling a simple little story not with words but through a collection of gestures and movements. Jones makes Marc Antony the most expressive bulldog in the history of American animation; the furrowing of his brow, scrunching of his nose, half-cocked grin, and a multitude of other facial tics relays to the audience a panoply of hopes, fears, and ultimately his love for Pussyfoot. While many writers and animators today are content with bludgeoning their audiences with sight gags and gross-out humor very few understand the key characteristic that separates good animated stories from the timeless masterpieces, like Feed the Kitty, is nuance. All characters, be they human or otherwise, are emotionally complicated creatures. We are contradictory by nature; even in times of joy we can suffer the pangs of grief and during moments of great fear we might find to our amazement a need to laugh at our own predicaments. Feed the Kitty lives on not because it hearkens back to a simpler time in the history of American animation, but because it shows us what we have now lost when popular animated shows like Family Guy revel in base humor and have relegated the expression of genuine emotions like love, hope, and fear as trite and cliché. In a perfect world it would be the other way around.