Saturday Night Fever

More controversial than Quadrophenia, is Saturday Night Fever the definitive mod movie? Maybe not, but Johnny Taylor sat through it - twice - and let's us know his thoughts.

It may seem funny to be reviewing a 1977 "disco" movie on a mod site, but I recently recorded it on a late show, watched it the next evening, and found it so good I had to watch it again the next day.

There are so many things in this movie that I could relate to even though the whole disco era was never really my scene. The main character (Tony Manero, played by John Travolta of course ) and his friends are the leaders at the local disco club. They live in a working class district of New York, where their Saturday night out is sex and drugs and (loosely) rock and roll, and I think we can all relate to that. The opening scene shows him strutting down the street, knowing he looks good, checking out the girls and looking at the new clothes styles in the store. The dead-end job he has at a hardware store is just a means to make the money to go out and enjoy himself at the weekend.

And he is fanatical about his appearance as we witness when we watch him getting dressed to go out for the evening. That his parents don't altogether approve of his clothes and hairstyle doesn't really bother him, although he is intensely conscious of making sure he looks just right (does this sound familiar to any of you?).
Witness the scene at the dinner table when his father hits him on the back of the head. He is more concerned about his hair being spoilt that being humiliated in front of his family and says ``Would you just watch the hair? I work a long time on my hair, and you hit it!''

Down at the club, he is The Face who everyone looks up to, and don't a lot of us want that as well.

There is also a fight scene with a rival bunch which is reminiscent of the old mods and rockers fights of the sixties.
But the big recurring theme in this movie is about people who desperately want to belong to a group or lifestyle.
Tony's pal Bobby C, who is tolerated by the gang as he drives them around and usually gets drugs, desperately wants to belong to them and be treated as an equal. This ultimately leads to his tragic death near the end of the movie when he tries to emulate their antics and show them he can be just like them.
Annette, Tony's ex-girlfriend, who is still in love with him, also wants to accepted as one of the group. Again she is someone prepared to do anything to be like them and this provides another somber moment.

The owner of the hardware store wants Tony to make a career of his present job. In one scene he points out to Tony, that he could become like one of his workers who has been with him since leaving school, and our hero is visibly horrified that he should suffer that fate.

Tony's parents have an elder son, Father Frank, of whom they are so proud as he is a priest, but he realizes that the life is not for him, although he is not sure quite what he wants to be and he seems to disappear oddly about half way through the movie.

Stephanie, Tony's dance partner, also wants to get away from her the working class roots, and join the affluent downtown people across the river in Manhattan and mix with people with wider interests.

I find a couple of the dance sequences when he dances by himself and when he leads the people in the club in a kind of line dance exciting even today, and it is easy to see why people just watched the movie for that alone. But the film is much more than that and as a chronicle of youth culture I think it stands up pretty well. Ultimately, Tony realizes that no matter how good he is at dancing, there are other people out there who are coming up to challenge him and it is time to move on with his life.

So watch this movie again and see why it was Gene Siskel's favourite movie ( he bought the white suit).
Oh and watch it by yourself, then your mates won't know that you were nodding your head in time with some of the music.

Other articles on Uppers you might enjoy

Comments:

linnnny	jan 17 2005 6:31PM

cool stuff guys!:)

Ona Bettie	jun 28 2004 10:32AM
http://None

Saturday Night Fever is heard a SHOT around the world (this it was amazzzing [discomazzzzzing]). My favorite character was Tony Manero(John Travolta) because he's always the club and his dances were cool. I think John Travolta is the hottest and coolest actor in the whole world.

bomber	feb 9 2004 7:55PM

2nd posting on this one. Around the time when SNF was released it was without a doubt more progressive to be a soulboy/girl in London . Although the film was most definatly based on 60,s mods[ nik cohn] The connections are there quite clearly. The London Soul scene was already established, with a sprinkling of disco emerging, a few years before the film came around, with an american flavour. And escaping the commercial soulboy scene of 79 /80,s to become a revivialist mod is hardly very original.....is it now. How can imating a past cult from 20 yrs back be authentic.

tim	jan 20 2004 10:48AM

I've got any article somewhere supporting the evidence that SNF was indeed based on West London Mods....JT's character was based on a top Face....

Happiness Stan	sep 8 2003 4:43PM

As someone who became a mod in the late 70's/early 80's to escape the disco/soulboy thing in England, it is odd to note that Saturday Night Fever remains a classic film as far as I am concerned. The sense of not belonging to the world as a whole and identifying with a one group and being proud to admit it must strike a chord with many mods.

Helen	aug 26 2003 1:38PM

Bill! That's exactly what I thought - it's almost as if Weller saw that film and decided to copy Bobby D! ;) I love many of Scorsese's films - Casino's fab as well. Lots of my favourite lounge music and tunes like Timi Yuro's 'Hurt' pop up too. There's a very good book on film costume (the title evades me at the moment) which has a chapter on the clothes in Scorsese's films and points out that in 'goodfellas' the pointy shirt collars get increasingly longer and pointier as the film goes on, as if signposting the characters' descent (it may also be because the film goes from the 50's through the 70's!). Scorsese's dad (who also had cameo roles in some of the films) was a tailor, which perhaps goes some way to explaining the obsessive detail with costumes in his films. Although it's a bit cheesy, De Niro's film 'A Bronx Tale' is pretty good for music and costume acting as signs, and as it's set in the late 60s you can hear The Kinks and The Four Tops, which is maybe a bit 'obvious' but works very well. Why can't British directors do this? All we get is 'Heartbeat' with Hermits Hermits and farmers in wellies!

Bill Luther	aug 21 2003 5:48PM

the next time you're watching "Mean streets" take notice of how much Deniro looks like Weller '79 with that stingy brim riding on the back of his head in that 3 button blacl leather coat!! Maybe it's just the greasy hair and the mole, but I swear he looks like Weller around the time of "Setting Sons" when he had long hair and was always sporting that pork pie!!

JTO	aug 21 2003 2:48PM

Mean Streets is fantastic - 'Goodfellas' also has some spot on use of clothes and music in terms of pinning down period - wierd how Tarantino gets loads of credit for that, when Scorcese was there with both the gangster film thing AND the soundtracks - anyway, sounds like we could do with an article . . .

Fred, Uppers.	aug 21 2003 8:24AM

Saturday Night Fever is a VERY cool movie and along with Scorsese's brilliant Mean Streets from '73 (w. an ace cool Robert de Niro + Harvey Keitel) they are definetly a lot more mod than Quadrophenia, at least in one MAJOR sense - they are both exploring a hard and fast underground street culture, but with such a much closer attention to detail than Q - not at least in terms of the clothes (where most of the cast in Q. looks pretty shit). Overall, they both give a lot better meaning to "Clean Living Under Difficult Cirumstances...", albeit in 70's NY instead of 60's London. And the music in Mean Streets is great - Doo Woop, Motown, Stones. And, then there is a brilliant scene where the boys get all totally drunk in a bar, which Guy Ritchie completely ripped off for his bar scene in Lock, Stock and...Well, if you haven't seen it yet, you really should. I still like Q. a lot though, I must admit. Obviously they three are all completely different movies, but between them, they all - in one way or the other - pretty well captures the pure essence of of mod; ultra cool and hard kids that are totally dedicated to their very own elitist street culture, with it's own set of rules, outside the mainstream and with a complete obsession with looking sharp and living for the weekend. Sounds like mod to me!

Bil Luther	aug 20 2003 2:01PM

You know I've never seen it, though I did sorta see it emulated on the dancefloor at several horrible middle school dances in the late 70's that I was , literally, dropped off at. The plot does sound amusing and is certainly probably better written than that dreadful "Quadrophenia" thing and if I could overcome my fears of late 70's Bee Gee's music I might be tempted to invesitgate it sometime. However disturbing it may be one must take into account Nik Cohn's connection and credibilty, which I suppose adds more than ample creedence to it's inclusion here.

Johnny Forgotten	aug 20 2003 12:42PM

yes. great film. but let's not go out of our way to pin the mod tag on it. I mean so what if it's mod or not? does everything have to be clared with the chairmen of the board (yes. indeed. pun!)?? I'd rather see an in depth article on the film or films on youth culture, than a simple ok-stamp from the/a modfather to view the thing. having said that I must say it was refreshing to see the title in the new articles list! Keep on pushing them bounderies uppers (failing taking them away)!

JTO	aug 19 2003 7:55AM

Purple Rain - is it mod?

Alex Roest	aug 19 2003 4:19AM

Can't remember you did that Bomb, but would surely have backed you up had I seen it as I read about the film being based on Mods a long time ago. Can't remember where exactly but the Shepherd's Bush connection is definitely there. That does make Travolta an unlikely Mod hero then, doesn't it ?

bomber	aug 18 2003 6:22PM

I brought this subject up on modculture, some time ago.... Nik Cohn did base the storey on Shepherds Bush mods... but no one believed me or contributed hardly to the subject... but for sure it was based on london mods...a different setting a different place a different style.

Make your own comment

More controversial than Quadrophenia, is Saturday Night Fever the definitive mod movie? Maybe not, but Johnny Taylor sat through it - twice - and let's us know his thoughts.

Other articles on Uppers you might enjoy

Jeff Noon and 'The Modernists'

Meeting John Phillip Law