Don Bluth Retrospective Series: 'An American Tail' (1986)
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Henri: J'me excuse pardonnez, but did you say never? So young, and you've already lost hope! This is America, the place to find hope. If you give up now, you will never find your family. So never say never!
And thus begins Feivel Mousekewitz’s journey to America. Released on November 21, 1986, a mere four months after Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective, this was Don Bluth’s second animated feature after The Secret of NIMH. An American Tail would go on to become Bluth’s third-highest grossing movie, earning $84 million worldwide, behind The Land Before Time and Anastasia.
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An American Tail follows the journey of the Mousekewitz family, centering on the young son Feivel. In the year 1885, the Russian-Jewish mouse family falls victim to an antisemitic Cossack pogrom as does the human Moscowitz family in whose house they live in and share. While the human family has to deal with the actual Cossacks, the mice deal with the Cossack cat counterparts. Papa Mousekewitz convinces the family that they would be better off in America where “there are no cats”.
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Excited to be on the ship, and fascinated by his surroundings, Feivel goes exploring, but, during a storm, he gets swept overboard in front of his father. Convinced that their son is dead, the family continues their immigration to America. Feivel, meanwhile, has ended up in a bottle and safely makes it to the Statue of Liberty, where he meets Henri the Pigeon. Henri gives Feivel the hope he needs to find his family, and, going through the New York immigration tropes of name-changing at Ellis Island, working in a sweatshop, a visit to Tammany Hall, and immigration rallies, Feivel is finally reunited with his family. They discover together that they have not left the cats behind in Russia, but, working together with Irish, Italian, and German mice, they can fight against their common enemy for a happy ending.
After the success of The Secret of NIMH, Bluth attracted Steven Spielberg, who produced An American Tail with Universal and Amblin Studios. An American Tail was Universal’s highest-grossing animated film at the time. Kathleen Kennedy is also listed as a producer; she has since become president of Lucasfilm at Disney. It also brought some high-profile talent for its voice actors: Nehemia Persoff had gotten the attention of Bluth after his performance in Yentl with Barbra Streisand, and he had done work in many film projects (about 200 by the time of his death at the age of 102!). The extraordinary prolific Christopher Plummer lent his voice and singing skills to Henri the Pigeon; Madeline Kahn and Dom DeLuise worked together on many Mel Brooks movies and had been guests on The Muppet Show and were cast as Gussie Mausheimer and Tiger, respectively. Dom DeLuise had also worked on The Secret of NIMH and went on to work on All Dogs go to Heaven.
John Horner did the score of this movie after Jerry Goldsmith, who had done The Secret of NIMH, was unable to do so. There are fourteen musical numbers in An American Tail; Steven Spielberg envisioned the film to be a musical. The most famous of these is “Somewhere Out There”, performed by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram. “Somewhere Out There” went on to win two Grammy Awards, including “Song of the Year”.
I have fond memories of my parents taking my sister and me to see An American Tail in the movie theater when it first came out, and I bet I could find my stuffed Feivel somewhere at either my parents’ house or my Granny’s attic.
Rewatching it now as an adult, I am struck at how much things change, they still stay the same; antisemitism is at an all-time high with over 10,000 reported antisemitic incidents reported in the United States since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, and many European Jews reporting harassment as well. Immigration is also under attack, as the majority of American voters went for Donald Trump, who ran a very anti-immigrant platform, and has given orders to ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) officers to go into immigrant communities and ramp up arrests. But, I am a forever optimist; just like the mice are able to band together, even with the help of one of the cats, I also believe that people can band together for good and overcome the negativity that permeates our society and truly make our world a better place for all.
You can see the original trailer here:
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Sources: IMDb, IMDb, Wikipedia, Fandom.com, Ranker.com, FRA, USNews
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