听 The club in which "Saturday Night Fever" 's most uplifting and memorable scenes take place is called 2001 Odyssey - what better year to revisit this timely classic?
Just as every film with a disco scene since 1977 refers in some way to "Saturday Night Fever", the film itself is saturated in movie references. As Tony Manero (John Travolta) struts his way through the dreary streets of Brooklyn, he swings a paint can to the beat, recalling the opening of "Shaft". Later quoted in "Boogie Nights", Manero's bedroom is stuffed with 70s icons: posters of "Rocky", "Enter the Dragon", "Dog Day Afternoon", and Farrah Fawcett.
Remembered for the feverish Saturday nights of the title, the film does not cower from portraying the rest of the week. A powerful sense of place pervades. While the dance floor provides the spectacle, the Brooklyn Bridge is the focal point of the drama, from dreams of escape to Manhattan (where everything, we are told, is beautiful - even the lunch hours), to burgeoning romance, to the tragic fate of troubled Bobby C.
Being the king of the dance floor is not considered unmanly, as in "Billy Elliot" but it is this pitiless machismo that defines the characters. Manero and his friends are unable to relate to women as anything other than "nice girls" or trash, a conviction that results in rape.
The film rocketed the white-suited "watch the hair!" Travolta to stardom, but the rest of the cast failed to cross the bridge.
Read a review of the sequel.
