Cinema
Dumped on
John Wells
Saturday Night Fever (Empire) The Goodbye Girl (Warner West End 2) My reasons for going to see Saturday Night Fever (X) were I suppose largely professional as I'm interested in how you move cameras and cut film or video-tape to music. I was also in a-bad mood before I got there: the friend I had asked to see it turned me down out of weariness, irritation etc and asked me to take a rather prim lady acquaintance of hers who needed `cheering up': I would probably have enjoyed the film more if I hadn't been wondering how she was taking the screwing in the back of the car scene. Underprivileged New York youths of Italian extraction outside disco waiting to use back seat. Off-screen voice from inside car: I ain't made her come yet. Foreground figure: Since when did dat worry chew? Voices from inside car: Wah wah wah oh oh oh etc. Male voice from inside car: What did chew say yuh name wuz?
The screenplay, as I discovered by ringing up the publicity office, is by Normal Wexler or possibly Wexter. It contains various other matchbox classics of the same kind, like Girl on Dancefloor: If I'm such a lousy fuck, how come da guys always send me flowahs da nex day? Partner: I dunno. Maybe dey tink yuh dead or sumpin. Also, one more elevated exchange between name-dropping secretary and unsophisticated boy-friend, played by John Travolta. Secretary: Laurence Olivier came into the agency today. Unsophisticated Friend: (With mouthful of hamburger and bits of onion hanging out) Da who? Secretary: You know him, he's the most famous actor in the world. Unsophisticated Friend: Ong. Secretary: British actor. The guy does all those Polaroid commercials. Unsophisticated Fri
end (Eyes gleaming slightly): Oh yuh. He's great.
The story line is by no means simple. Nice John Travolta works all week in paint store, content with low wages — Employer (outraged): I never see a guy so shit-ass happy on a two dollar fifty raise! — prepares himself on Saturday nights in a colourful whirl of shampoo commercial hairdryer shots, fresh shirt tossed on bed to music, narcissistic jigging in front of mirror to adjust tiny gold crucifix among chest hair etc to escape from Catholic family given to slapping each other at table — Mind da hair! — and worship of older son in priesthood into orange and yellow glow of underlit dance-floor at disco where he eventually meets Olivier-spotting secretary with whom he wins Come Dancing competition but generously surrenders first prize to hated Puerto Rican pair who come second. Tries to rape Olivier-spotter in back of car, she kicks him in crutch and brings him to a maturer view of human relationships — full screen close-up of hand clasping hand—and the Hope of More — kiss on lips before credits. There are various subplots — priest brother unfrocks self, guy in gang wishing to disprove aspersions cast on personal courage falls off bridge etc — which threaten at times to swamp the main story, and there is what might be termed a consistent excremental vision of life for poor Italians in New York in that friends and enemies alike are referred to every fifteen seconds as 'assholes' and the word 'shit' hits the back wall of the cinema every seven point five seconds.
Nevertheless most of the film is devoted to pop records, against which the action sometimes develops but usually stands still, and although it starts well with Travolta's boots kicking into the camera on the beat as he walks down a street and every cut coming where it's wanted musically, both the camera movement and the editing very soon deteriorate. There is one master shot of the dance-floor used in at least three different sequences, and the sub-Top of the Pops tricks like dry ice churning up between the dancers, star filters dazzling the lens and the coloured squares of glass that make up the floor constantly changing their patterns give the impression that neither the producers nor the director have that much confidence in Lester Williams's choreography or John Travolta's dancing.
I see from a large advertisement in the Evening Standard that all the critics worth mentioning liked The Goodbye Girl (A), written by Neil Simon and directed by Herbert Ross, so apart from saying that I saw it in more congenial company and absolutely agree I'll leave it at that. There is one obligatory nod to the excremental vision of New York — in this case a milder discussion about getting dumped on — and one Laurence Olivier joke when a ludicrous intellectual director in blue gym-shoes accuses Lord Olivier of having wilfully flown in the face of the historical evidence on Richard III by The correct title of Duncan Fallowell's book to be published by Hamish Hamilton later this year is Drug Tales.
dangling the wrong hand and limping with the wrong leg, but otherwise it's a New York which any middle-aged middle-class meal° person like myself with a sense of respect fro our greatest living actor will feel very nu° more at home. I actually went to see it because I like Nen Simon's writing, lyrical New York Jewish, 35 exemplified by Richard Dreyfuss's line whe,11 he's standing in a leaky telephone booth' heavy rain 'lam soaked to the bone and I have a very low threshold to disease', but there Ise great deal to be learned for anyone eye° vaguely interested in serious comedy from She concentration and imagination of the actors, the cameramen and the director. Quinn Cummings, who can't be more than nine' almost steals it from Marsha Mason, 4°,4 plays her ex-dancer mother, and Richary Dreyfuss who plays their actor-lodger, b„tit Dreyfuss wins in the end with the wonderfuld absurd interpretation of Richard Hi della./ anded by the blue gym-shoed intellect!' director. And on the 'question of movill cameras, watch what Herbert Ross does I.° echo and enhance Dreyfuss's mincing SP°. round the table as Richard Ea in the fits1 rehearsal scene.
Previous page
