Word: wexler
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SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER Directed by John Badham Screenplay by Norman Wexler...
Saturday Night Fever is set in the New York equivalent of Rocky's South Philadelphia-Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, an Italian-American enclave where working-class kids slave all week so that they can dress up and boogie on Saturday nights. Norman Wexler's screenplay focuses on the best dancer in the community, Tony Manero (Travolta), a paint-store salesman who still lives with his smothering family. Tony is ignorant of the world, narcissistic and, except on the dance floor, aimless. The film's story is about his tumultuous romance with another good dancer (Karen Lynn Gorney...
Unfortunately, the statement proves to be a dangling phrase. In the mechanical effort to push Tony toward a catharsis, Wexler loads the script with a series of stagy and unconvincing plot incidents: a suicide, a gang rumble, a gang bang. By the time Tony takes a soul-searching all-night subway ride to arrive at the story's bogus happy ending, the movie has thrown away its subject to lull us with sentimental bromides about Finding Oneself. We might as well be at Roseland...
...film's technical aspects complement the carefully understated acting and direction. Haskell Wexler's cinematography is skillful and at times breathtakingly beautiful, but it is never vulgar or flashy. The sets are simple and the props few; Ashby avoids mounting exhibits of United Artists' vast collection of antique furniture. Bound For Glory is accurate but not pedantic, entertaining but not slick. Like Woody's songs, Bound For Glory is deceptively simple; the surface simplicity serves only to mask the care and skill involved in its production. Besides, as Pete Seeger said in his forward to the book, "Any damn fool...
...movie blows its chance. Although Cinematographer Haskell Wexler has executed in a masterly way the visual style chosen by Director Ashby, it is at odds with the story. Diffusion filters give a falsely nostalgic, pastoral glow to landscapes forever fixed in the hard-edged photos made of the '30s by the likes of Walker Evans. Soft photography makes the movie seem sentimental even on those few occasions when it is trying...