Saturday Night Fever (1977)

[jyrgenn]

This is a film that in my age group (14 when it came out) everyone had seen, or knew what it was about, and, in my circles, loved to hate. The phoniness of disco culture was so despised in the alternative wannabe-hippie crowd that I swam with.

 

Thinking about it now, I wonder who actually had seen it before hating it — I certainly hadn't. Probably because we hated it so much and just knew it was bad.

 

I have been thinking about watching it for a while, among other things for the first on-screen appearance of the adored Fran Drescher, but why I decided to do it today, I cannot remember any more (dizzy brain and all). Anyway, I did it. It cost a few bucks at Amazon Prime Video, but hey.

 

Turned out that, like with other things we loved to hate in the past (e.g. Miami Vice), it wasn't even bad. Now it is clearly not the pinnacle of the motion picture arts of the 20th century, but with all its weaknesses it really isn't bad.

 

Here be SPOILERS.

 

Tony Mareno, a 19-year-old Italian-American, works a menial job and lives with his family in Brooklyn. His parents always pick on him because he is not like his idolised older brother, a priest. His escape from this are his friends, centered around the car one of them has, and the Saturday nights in the local discotheque, where he is a star of the dance floor. Money is tight, and his chances of changing his situation look poor.

 

For a dance competition he teams up with Stephanie, a good dancer he just met, but who, other than Tony, wants to keep it strictly about the dancing, nothing personal. (With the dance partner he dumped for her, the roles were exactly reversed.) Still, at the coffees after dance practice, she goes to great lengths to impress him with stories from her glorious new job she has found in Manhattan, a whole different world. Over the time she is somewhat drawn to him, but doesn't act on it. Still, he helps her move to Manhattan — only to get upset to learn she had had a fling with a much older man who she met through work.

 

There is a background of not quite gang wars, but violent altercations between the Italians and the Puerto Ricans, but not the Romeo-and-Juliet theme from West Side Story. Other than his friends, after one incident Tony recognises how senseless and futile that is and finds himself disgusted by his friends who cannot see that.

 

Tony and Stephanie win the dance competition, but he is upset because the 2nd-placed Puerto Rican couple were clearly better (and the IMO really excellent black couple not even mentioned) and he wanted to win by dancing better, not by the bigotry of the judges. He gives the prize to the Latin couple, which upsets Stephanie. In the car he tries to rape her (likely first thinking she wanted sex because they kissed on the dance floor), but she fights him off and runs away.

 

In the same night one of his friends falls to his likely (albeit unclear) death from a bridge after trying to show he isn't a coward. This really shakes Tony up. He rides around on the subway all night before he goes to Stephanie's new home. He ashamedly apologises to her, which she accepts, and resolves to go to Manhattan for a better job and life, too. They resolve to be friends.

 

(There is a bit more than this, but I tried to keep it short. Didn't really succeed anyway.)

 

 

Today, all this sounds a bit clichéd. (Maybe not so much when the film was new.) But the dynamic between the characters feels mostly convincing, as does Tony's feeling of despair or rather dullness about his situation. While Stephanie is a hopeful upwardly mobile, but may still fail, he doesn't even have that hope.

 

Now this is a film that so does not pass the Bechdel test. In the eyes of the men here, women are there to be lusted after, to dance with, to fuck, or rape. It is only at the end that Tony thinks there can be something else. I wouldn't say the film is sexist, but what he depicts — from a strictly male perspective — definitely is.

 

Still, I liked it. It was much grittier than I expected, and much less shallow. The phoniness of disco culture isn't at all like I expected. Sure, the people go there to see and be seen, to look good, impress others, oh, and dance. But they really meet friends, their social circle, and some of them, the more passionate dancers like Tony, delight in following their passion, not just to be admired by others, but obviously because they love dancing.

 

The gang / ethnic violence theme reminded me, as mentioned above, of West Side Story, but then I thought, ah that was so much earlier. It was — a mere 20 years. That felt like a lot in my youth; West Side Story in the 50s, that was ancient history in the 70s. But from today's perspective, that is both later middle 20th century, and Saturday Night Fever is now 44 years old.

 

 

Now this isn't a must see. But I was curious, and delighted I found it entertaining and, other than I would have expected 40something years ago, not too stupid.