The opening scene to John Badham’s ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977) focuses solely on introducing the main character of Tony Manero. The film opens with an establishing shot of New York City, starting in Manhattan and then continues to pan over the Brooklyn Bridge into the suburbs of Brooklyn. It’s quite clear that the film will focus on the old and the new of 70s New York, with old being Brooklyn and new being Manhattan. The bridge serves as a metaphor, it being a path to a ‘better life’ as only people with class and money occupy the surroundings of Manhattan and it can also serve as a representation to the Italian-American identity.
The camera focuses primarily on John Travolta’s character as he walks down the busy streets of New York, accompanied by a non-diegetic soundtrack of Stayin’ Alive by The Bee Gees. The sound is particularly synchronous with his footsteps as he makes his prolonged journey to work, in which he buys pizza and finds a ‘dream shirt’ along the way (which he cannot afford). Costume, which is an important aspect of mise en scene as it can determine representational issues within a character’s job, social class and even an aspect of their culture, is interesting in the opening sequence. His clothes contrast against his monotonous surroundings, which signifies his character as quite different, unique, and somewhat prosperous. Even though we see him wearing ‘fancy’ clothing and acting smug with the ladies on the street, we see him holding a paint pot as a prop and this shows to us that he is just an ordinary young man who is part of the working class and has to work his way to get the things he most wants.
Tony’s workplace, which is at a local hardware store, shows that he is apart of the working class community and it proves to be a dead end compared to his dreams of disco dancing. His work group seem to be quite family oriented and relaxed as we see him ask his boss for money earlier than usual in order to buy his ‘dream shirt.’ Though he got denied, he still had the freedom and ability to be able to ask. From the dinner scene with Tony’s family, it becomes obvious that they’re relatively strict and religious (his brother was a priest). We see some traditional Italian cultural values at the dinner table, including spaghetti which is a well-known cliché dish associated with Italian people and his grandmother is also speaking in Italian, which is a huge giveaway.
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