In an email, Phillip Glasser, who describes his experience voicing Fievel as a child “beyond a joy,” says that he also personally relates to the Mousekewitzes’ story.
#AMERICAN TAIL MOVIE#
(Bluth laughs, “I said, ‘Oh no! Every movie is about mice!’” He had previously worked on The Secret of NIMH and The Rescuers.) It was also Spielberg’s idea to give the main character the Yiddish name “Fievel,” after his grandfather, a Jewish-Russian immigrant to America. Bluth tells me the connection is coincidental it was Steven Spielberg who first approached him with an idea for a story about a mouse inspired by his family’s history. Over the phone, I ask Don Bluth, director, producer, and animator of the film, about the decision to portray the main characters as mice although there is a long history of anti-Semitic and xenophobic propaganda depicting Jews and immigrants as rodents, more recently, cartoonists have reclaimed the mouse as a symbol of resistance. In order to escape further anti-Semitic pogroms in Europe, the family travels to the United States- “There are no cats in America.” Along the journey, Fievel Mousekewitz is separated from his parents and spends the rest of the movie searching for them in New York, which isn’t the catless utopia with cheese-paved streets the mice had hoped for. Holiday festivities are cut short when the Jews in the village are attacked and their homes, destroyed. The film begins in 1885 Shostka, Russia, where the Moskowitzes and their mouse counterparts, the Mousekewitzes, are celebrating Hanukkah. Released 33 years ago on November 21, 1986, An American Tail is a story about anti-Semitism, immigration, and the American Dream-with a bangin’ soundtrack by James Horner.
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