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An American Tail Plot

An American Tail is an animated film produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and directed by Don Bluth, originally released in movie theatres on November 21, 1986.

The film starts off on Hanukkah in 1885, opening in the village of Shostka, Russia, and it shows the story of the life of a family of Jewish-Russian mice who emigrate to escape a pogrom after their village is destroyed by Cossack raiders. Believing in the American dream they head to New York City because (as a song repeated early in the picture goes) "there are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese." Once there, they immediately discover that there are indeed cats in America (and plenty of them), and begin living in a typical late 19th century immigrant manner: working in a sweatshop, living in horrible conditions, and submitting to a feline protection racket as an alternative to being eaten.

The film follows Fievel Mousekewitz, who is separated from his family during a storm as the boat approaches America after departing Hamburg, Germany. With nowhere to go upon arrival, Fievel ends up meeting Warren T. Rat, a conman who sells him to a sweatshop. Fievel escapes and with his new friends Tony and Bridget, begins a search for his parents.

During this time, the mice of New York decide that they are fed up with the continuous attacks by cats (and paying Warren for protection), and must find a way to defeat them. It is Fievel who suggests a plan to build a giant "Mouse of Minsk" (based off of folklore) to chase the cats into the harbor where they will end up on a ship going to Hong Kong.

That night, the mice get to work. Fievel, however, still looking for his family, journeys through the sewers when he thinks he hears his Papa playing a violin. It turns out that the music is coming from Warren and a gang of cats. Warren is actually a cat in disguise and is running a protection racket! When they discover Fievel, the mouse is captured and imprisoned in a cage.

Fievel ends up befriending one of the cats, Tiger, who lets him go. The cats chase him to the docks where Warren's identity is revealed and the plan is successfully executed. A minor fire starts afterwards, which ends up bringing Tony, Bridget, Tiger, and Fievel's family together. Realizing they're all looking for the same person, they eventually find Fievel, who is finally reunited with everyone.

An American Tail reflects the terrible conditions immigrants to the United States faced at the turn of the century (the mice represent the various oppressed minority/immigrant populations of the period, and the cats their various tormentors) and the film is similar in this respect to Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus. It also illustrates the hope (of a new, better life) that America represented to these immigrants at that time.

The ethnic and even religious backgrounds of characters are made somewhat starker than is normal in animation. This is most true in the case of Fievel's family, but it is also true with other characters. For example, characters discuss their lives "back home" in Ireland, Sicily, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere (the Sicilian mouse describes how his mother went to beg for mercy from Mafia cats that had taken his brother, only to be killed herself, with her rosary thrown to the ground in the process). Later, a dead mouse is shown clutching a rosary and a cross.

Art Spiegelman has in fact publicly accused Spielberg of plagiarism due to the fact the Jews are depicted as mice in An American Tail just as in Spiegelman's earlier Maus, a metaphor Spiegelman had adopted from Nazi propaganda. Even though Maus appeared collected not sooner than in 1986 just as the film, it had been printed as a series in Raw magazine years before that.

Note: These character descriptions are based on this film only, and do not contain information from later films in the series. The actors/actresses who voiced the characters are shown in parentheses.

The story's central character, Fievel is modeled on a curious, hyperactive and seemingly fearless boy. However, throughout most of the film, while separated from his family Fievel becomes a very scared and lost child in a strange land, given hope and encouragement by the friends (Henri the Pigeon, Tony, Bridget and Tiger the vegetarian cat) he meets on his search. Tony and some of the other American mice call him 'Filly'.

Fievel is always drawn with an oversized red jumper and blue hat somewhat too big for his head (it fits at the end of the film). The hat is an heirloom of sorts, having been passed from father to son for three generations (Fievel is the fourth to wear it). Except for a brief period near the story's end, Feivel never loses the hat through all his adventures and scrapes.

While "Fievel" is the generally accepted spelling of his name, the opening credits spell him as "Feivel" which is technically the correct Yiddish spelling of the name (see also Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz and Feivel Gruberger) as Yiddish is based largely on German, including its spelling rules (the ending credits spell his name as "Fievel"). However, many English-speaking writers have come to adopt the spelling Fievel (with reversed i and first e) especially for this character; it was this spelling which was used on the film's poster, in promotional materials and tie-in merchandise, and in the title of the sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, while in the opening credits of the first film, the correct spelling is employed. Feivel was named specifically after Spielberg's own immigrant grandfather. The rest of this article will use the "correct" spelling of "Feivel" (except where applicable). His last name is a play on the Jewish-Russian last name "Moskowitz", the name of the human occupants of the house Feivel's family is living under in the beginning of the film.

Feivel's older sister, she is drawn in a traditional Russian peasant girl's dress, including a red head kerchief (incorrectly called a "babushka" in the film) given to her on Hannukah at the beginning of the film. She is optimistic, cheerful and obedient. After Feivel was washed off the boat to America she continued to believe that her brother was alive, a hope fulfilled when Feivel was found at the end. She was given an American name 'Tillie' at the immigration point at Castle Garden on Ellis Island.

Tanya has two siblings, Feivel and Yasha.

The character was voiced by Betsy Cathcart for the song "Somewhere Out There".

The main villain of the film's story, Warren T. is really a cat in rat's clothing and the leader of the Mott Street Maulers, a gang of cats who terrorize the mice of New York City. His name is a play on "warranty", hence his first name and middle letter. He pretends to the mice to be a rat liaison with the gang, receiving protection money for a 'warranty' on their safety, which often enough is violated anyway as can be seen by the frequent cat attacks perpetrated by his gang. The downfall of his feline empire comes when Feivel, lead into his hideout by Warren's violin thinking it was his papa playing it, discovers that Warren is in fact a cat. Warren and his gang chases Feivel across town to a pier after Tiger frees him, but fall into the trap the mice set up, and the Giant Mouse of Minsk they built forces them off a pier, and onto a boat headed for Hong Kong. Warren is accompanied nearly all the time by his accountant Digit, a small cockroach.

Warren T. plays the violin and quotes Shakespeare, both very badly.

The head of the Mousekewitz family, Papa plays the violin and tells stories to his children. Too overcome with grief and believing his son to be dead after being lost at sea, he stubbornly refuses to search for Feivel after the family land in America. He tries to convince Tanya of that fact, however things change when he eventually meets Tony and Bridget, who show him Feivel's hat.

Two of his stories were realised later during Feivel's adventures, notably the Giant Mouse of Minsk, which was built as a giant mouse machine, the mice's secret weapon to drive the cats out of New York.

By his account during the journey to America, Papa's father was a cat victim and he woke up an orphan.

Feivel's mother. She appears the stricter of the Mousekewitz parents, and has a fear of flying. Mama, like most of the mice in the film, has a deep and open fear of cats. She is almost always seen taking care of her baby daughter Yasha.

A streetwise young mouse of Italian descent and with a 'tough New Yorker' attitude, Tony meets Feivel during their slavery at the sweatshop. He takes a liking to Feivel, and gives him an American name 'Filly'. After they escape the sweatshop, he becomes Feivel's friend and guide to the town.

While helping Feivel find his family he meets and becomes emotionally fond of Bridget, a pretty Irish activist. His last name is taken from the Italian word "Topo", meaning mouse.

A very large, cowardly, long-haired orange cat who also happens to be vegetarian, Tiger was a member of Warren T. Rat's 'Mott Street Maulers' cat-gang until he met and befriended Fievel, whom he helped to escape. He is the only cat in the story who gives mice a non-hungry smile.

Henri is a pigeon of French descent, who is in New York while building the Statue of Liberty. He is the first to meet Feivel upon entering America. He nurses Feivel back to health, and tells him that he should never give up in his search for his family (via the song 'Never Say Never'), a message which Feivel takes to heart.

Bridget (Cathianne Blore) - An Irish activist and Tony's girlfriend. Her fiery outrage against the unfairness of the cats may be due to the fact that her parents were killed by them, as she explains to Feivel. Whether this happened in Ireland or in New York is unknown. She is very kind to Feivel.

Honest John (Neil Ross) - A local politician who knows every voting mouse in New York, based loosely on Boss Tweed. He presides over a wake for an Irish Catholic mouse done in by cats at his Tammany-like headquarters. A constant drunkard who takes advantage of every voter's concern to increase his political prestige.

Gussie Mausheimer (Madeline Kahn) - A German mouse, she is New York's richest mouse, who rallies the mice into fighting back against the cats. Pompous and prone to speaking with a lisp (as well as an Elmer Fudd-style speech impediment).

Digit (Will Ryan) - Warren T.'s cockroach accountant, he has a fondness for counting money, but is plagued by frequent electrical charges in his antennae. It's usually up to him to correct Warren T's faulty Shakespeare quotations. It is seen that he is tired of Warren's constant smoking, and bad violin playing, but he is too afraid of Warren to do anything about it.

Yasha Mousekewitz (not voiced in the film) - The baby sister of Feivel and Tanya, constantly being looked after by Mama Mousekewitz.

Moe (Hal Smith) - A fat rat who runs the sweatshop Fievel is sold into by Warren T. Apparently even he sacrifices some of his profits to Warren in exchange for protection from the cats.

The film was a box office success, making the first Universal animation movies success in theaters. The film has grossed up to $47 million and $84 million worldwide.

Feivel was voiced by Phillip Glasser, who later did voicework for A Troll in Central Park. The voices of Mama and Papa were Erica Yohn and Nehemiah Persoff who, aside from reprising the voices for the sequels, had no other roles in animation. Dom DeLuise, who also voiced Jeremy in Don Bluth's The Secret of NIMH, Itchy in All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Stanley in A Troll in Central Park, was the voice of Tiger, a fat but friendly vegetarian cat that Feivel befriends (who presumably represents the less prejudiced of American citizens). Christopher Plummer, who also voiced the evil Grand Duke in Don Bluth's Rock-a-Doodle was the voice of the French pigeon, Henri. In the simultaneously-released Spanish version of the film, Feivel was voiced by Laura Bustamante.

While all of the animal characters were animated from scratch, the human characters were portrayed using the rotoscoping technique, in which sequences were shot in live action and then traced onto animation cels. This provides a realistic look for human characters, and distinguishes the cartoonish animal characters from the more realistically-animated humans. Rotoscoping is frequently employed in Don Bluth films, including The Secret of NIMH and Anastasia.

The film was released on VHS in the same year by CIC Video, with a Spanish dubbed version separately released on VHS as Un cuento americano (An American Tale, dropping the pun inherent in the English title), and is now available on a DVD that contains the main English track, as well as dubbing for French and Spanish.

The movie became the highest grossing non-Disney produced animated feature in first release in history at the time, drawing over $47 million USD. It was one of the first animated films to outdraw a Disney film, beating out The Great Mouse Detective (also released in 1986) by over $22 million USD. It would later be outperformed by the next Bluth film, 1988's The Land Before Time, which performed marginally against Oliver and Company. That record would in turn be shattered by The Little Mermaid in 1989.

The film was followed by its theatrical sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), the television series Fievel's American Tails, and two direct-to-video sequels: An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island and An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster, none of which Don Bluth had any involvement with.

Fievel later served as the mascot for Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio, appearing in its production logo. Also, as reported on the official An American Tail website, Fievel has become the mascot for UNICEF as well. There is also a Fievel-themed playground at Universal Studios Florida, featuring a large water slide and many over-sized objects such as books, glasses, cowboy boots, and more. It is the only such playground at any of NBC Universal's theme parks.

The soundtrack includes the Grammy-winning song, "Somewhere Out There". The music for the song, along with the rest of the score, was composed by James Horner.

Soundtrack album track listing:
"Main Title" (orchestral)
"The Cossack Cats" (orchestral)
"There Are No Cats In America" (song)
"The Storm" (orchestral)
"Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" (orchestral)
"Never Say Never" (song)
"The Market Place" (orchestral)
"Somewhere Out There" (song)
"Somewhere Out There" (end title version; performed by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram)
"Releasing the Secret Weapon" (orchestral, includes reprise of "There Are No Cats In America")
"A Duo" (song)
"The Great Fire" (orchestral)
"Reunited" (orchestral)
"Flying Away and End Credits" (orchestral)

Score cues left off the soundtrack:
Immigration Polka
On the Ship
Fievel Takes Off
Warren T. Rat
Tanya’s Feeling/Sweatshop
Fievel’s Escape
Poor Wandering One/On the Train Tracks
The Record/Mad Dash
Stars and Stripes/Falling
There ARE Cats In America!
Honest John and Gussie
The “Wawwy”
Building at the Pier
We’re Late!
Into the Sewers/The Cat Hideout (Beautiful Dreamer)
Get Me Dat Mouse!
Making Final Preparations/Tiger
Another Escape/Warren Revealed.