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The film Saturday Night Fever explores moral personality and how its development depends on the creation of a narrative of one's life. In each sphere of his life-work, family, and friends-Tony must struggle with competing visions of himself to understand and define himself. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Sure, the bell-bottom pants, platform shoes, and layers of gold chains are out-of-date, and the music may not glitter the way it did, but as the thirtieth anniversary of John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977) approaches, reconsideration and perhaps reevaluation are warranted. The music still pulses with teenage urgency, and the lyrics, like a Greek chorus, comment on the protagonist's trials and tribulations. The fever in the title is just that, a hot grip that lures the young adults who fill the story to dance at the local disco every Saturday night. Tony Manero (John Travolta), in particular, spends his weekdays living for it. Through the character of Tony, the film explores moral personality and how its development depends on the creation of a narrative of one's life. Woven through the dancing and teenage angst, then, is a moral fable of emerging self-awareness and the hurdles one must face when taking responsibility for his or her future.

Tony's life consists of three social spheres: working at the paint store, living at home with his family, and hanging out at the disco club with his friends. Each sphere harbors questions that Tony will have to answer about himself and his personal relationships. Tony will have to figure out who he is, what he values, and who he wishes to become. In short, he will have to create a story or narrative of himself and for himself-or accept the stories by which other people define him. As the movie progresses, we watch Tony's moral personality evolve in these three areas of his life as a result of observing other people and taking stock of the likely trajectory of his own fate. The narrative that Tony begins to fashion of his future grows in conjunction with the development of his moral traits, especially his self-awareness.

Saturday Night Fever illustrates the claim by Alisdair MacIntyre that narrative is essential to self-understanding. By providing a continuous subject for our different experiences, a personal history enables us to make sense of diverse and divergent episodes in our lives. For example, actions that we perform in various contexts, for a variety of reasons, make sense only when framed within a narrative unique to us. By connecting otherwise disparate actions and events, "we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out" (MacIntyre 197). Stories about individuals establish an ongoing reference to what are, in themselves, separate and discrete episodes. Narrative links these episodes together as both the effects of an identical person and also as influences on that person's moral character. The film encourages us to expand on MacIntyre's insight by showing how an individual's potential is part of his selfidentity. Consequently, included in the individual's narrative of himself is the projection of a possible future as well as his past history.1

Yet a story of who I may become does more than merely make me intelligible to myself, as MacIntyre argues. The forward-looking dimension of narrative also provides a plan of action, perhaps a life plan, by which we shape our decisions. The story that someone like Tony envisions for himself is the vehicle of self-creation, suggesting a trajectory of choices through which he can define who he will become. The choices Tony makes and the reasons he makes them suggest that moral growth and the story the individual tells about himself depend on each other. Just as narrative outlines a future that includes the indvidual's moral development, so does creating such a narrative require an array of moral traits with which to begin. A moral base on which to build the framework for Tony's story is necessary, so that he can develop more fully. For example, Tony must fend off competing views of who he is and what he can become from his family, friends, and his employer. The ability to overcome rival interpretations of who we are takes moral strength, self-awareness, and honesty. We watch Tony develop these moral virtues as he navigates the three social spheres that comprise his world.

In the paint store, we see that Tony is a hard worker and good with people, which hints at the kind of career to which he might someday aspire. When he receives a raise, Tony is grateful. However, he also has the independence of spirit and sense of his own worth to resist the picture his boss sketches of working permanently in the paint store. His family also has an image of who Tony is-a loser who is responsible for his family's problems. Tony must stand up for himself and expose the projections of his parents for the distortions they are. As with the narrative offered by the owner of the paint store, the narrative his parents try to foist on him is self-serving. Just as his boss would like to have Tony in harness for the foreseeable future, his parents need him to be the scapegoat for the family's problems. But Tony is able to reject these confining and debilitating views of who he is to figure out a more sustaining narrative of his own.

Tony is a very good dancer, maybe gifted enough to make a career of it. From the point of view of moral personality, what is most impressive is Tony's dedication and discipline. We repeatedly hear him tell his dance partners that they must practice, and we watch his willingness, even eagerness, to practice the same steps over and over. Tony, then, combines discipline with exuberance; his joy when dancing makes the work a labor of love. It is this quality, as much as his dance talent, that seems to separate Tony from his friends. Inverting the family's denigrating image of Tony, his pals delight in a flattering portrait of him, which inflates his ability. Yet Tony must distance himself from his friends for a deeper reason, of which their illusions about him are but the expression. His friends have no self-awareness or sense of their capacity to create narratives for their own lives. They seem to be stumbling into their future, pushed by family, friends, church, and youthful habits. Only Tony seems capable of selfconsciously seizing the strands of his life and weaving them into a story of who he might become. Tony is remarkable for seeing what his friends cannot: that their fighting, fooling around, and Saturday nights must soon come to an end.

Tony is able to change because he has intelligence, talent, and important moral virtues. We will see that although not well educated or well spoken, Tony is observant and thoughtful. His talent for dancing and dealing with people are buttressed by the virtues of integrity, honesty, and the openness to learn from other people. His story, then, is a coming-of-age tale. It presents a pivotal time in a young man's life, during which he can stay put (merely "stay alive") or break away and take some chances in the hopes of a more interesting, rewarding life. Over the course of watching Tony come of age and come into his own, we see how he resists the illusions of family and friends concerning him, and how he respects himself through his love of dance.

Disco King/Family Bum

The image that may be most memorable from the beginning of Saturday Night Fever is of Tony bopping down a busy city street. But that is not, in fact, how the movie starts. The opening shots are actually of two bridges: the Brooklyn Bridge that links Brooklyn with Manhattan, and the Verrazano- Narrows Bridge, leading from Staten Island to Brooklyn. We may recall these as the opening shots when the bridges later take on significance in the story. For then we are likely to see the Brooklyn Bridge as the path for Tony out of his old life and into a world in which he can grow as a person. On the other side of Brooklyn, the Verrazano Bridge represents Tony's adolescent past, the site of playing games with his friends and the scene of his pipe dreams. The film can be viewed as a tale of two bridges, one leading to the bright prospects of Manhattan and the other ending in the Italian Brooklyn of Tony's parents. The camera pans down from the Verrazano, past an elevated passenger train, to the legs and feet of someone walking in time to the soundtrack that is playing the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive." As Tony moves rhythmically down the street, swinging a can of paint, we hear the lyrics, "You can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time to talk." And Tony does have an eye for the ladies, pausing to sweet talk a dismissive young woman and to admire clothing in storefront windows

Back at the paint store, Tony asks for an advance on his pay to buy the shirt he has just seen, but his boss refuses, explaining that he pays on Monday to keep employees from blowing their paychecks over the weekend. Told that he should save for the future, Tony snaps back, "The hell with the future." His boss points out that "the future says 'hell with you.' It catches up with you and it says to hell with you, if you ain't planned for it." As the story unfolds, we see Tony think more seriously about his future, heeding the advice of his boss and his second dance partner, Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney). Tony possesses the virtue of openness: noticing what people do and listening to what they have to say with an eye to changing himself. These strengths further set him apart from his pals and make us hopeful about his future.

Entering his home, Tony hears an irritated "Where you been?"-first from his mother, then from his father, then his mother again. We get the impression that this is the usual flak that greets Tony, because he ignores his parents, runs upstairs, and exchanges affectionate greetings with his kid sister. The upbeat disco music resumes on the soundtrack as Tony blow-dries his hair and then puts on gold chains in his ritual preparation to go out dancing. The image of Tony primping in front of the bathroom mirror is intercut with shots of people dancing at the local disco club, bathed in a diffuse red light. The camera thereby conveys Tony's eager anticipation of his Saturday night out by suggesting that his thoughts are already dancing ahead to what the club has in store. Warming up in front of the mirror, talking with his father, Tony moves in an abbreviated dance, as if he can hear the revved-up music on the soundtrack.

The ensuing scene at the dinner table reveals an emotional family whose interactions are strained because the father is out of work, but too proud to allow his wife to work outside the home. A round-robin of slapping and shouting ends with a glimpse of Tony's wit. When his mother says that she is going back to church that evening to pray that Father Frank (Tony's older brother, played by Martin Shakar) calls her, Tony wryly observes that his mother is "turning God into a telephone operator."

That evening, we get our first view of Tony in action on the dance floor, in the same reddish haze that drenched the scenes that flashed during Tony's earlier coiffing. The music is presented as a unifying and invigorating force in Tony's life, as the songs on the soundtrack merge into the music within the storytime at the dance club.2 Tony dances energetically, yet smoothly, with Annette (Donna Pescow)-an adoring, cute girl who is destined to get her heart broken. The camera conveys the kinetic energy of the dancing by rapidly shooting the dancers at various angles, including top-down and bottomup, head shots and feet shots. Annette soon approaches Tony about entering the annual contest at the club, one that they had won before. Tony agrees, but reminds Annette that they will have to practice. She smiles, delighted at the prospect of spending lots of time with Tony, and says, "Yeah, we'll have to practice." When Annette puts her hand on his shoulder, Tony looks pointedly at it and tells her, "That's practice, Annette. It don't mean datin'. It don't mean socializin'. It means practice."

Tony then hits the dance floor with two girls, obliging one who commands him to kiss her. Tony is soon joined by his friends who form a line with the girls, and all the kids on the floor dance in sync, in a disco line dance. Smoke rises in the soft red light as we watch the dancers do a sprightly little choral number, as if in a reverie or fantasy. When Tony shortly does a breathtaking solo, we will have seen all configurations of dance: partnered, small group, choral, and solo. Together with the varied camera angles with which the dancing is shot, the film seems to be trying to capture every aspect of the disco fever, displaying a love for dance that reflects Tony's passion.

But Tony has more going for him than his flair for dancing. In his work, he is good with people as well as with paint. At the opening of the film, when Tony returns to the store with the can of paint, he has to calm an impatient customer. He tells her that he mixed the paint just for her (when in fact he had gone to another store to pick it up), and that he was also going to reduce the price by a dollar. Later, a professional painter compliments Tony on the quality and price of paint Tony had recently sold to him. As he tells Tony that he could come work for him, Tony's boss looks apprehensive and directly offers him a raise. A humorous exchange follows during which Tony is so grateful to receive the $2.50 per week raise that the boss increases the raise, twice, finally settling at $4.00. What should not be lost in the humor is the fact that Tony has ability. He knows how to communicate with customers and he has the ability to learn about paint, people, and the price of each.

When the owner of the paint store tells Tony that he has a future at the paint store, we see him pause to ponder the prospect of such a life. The employer says that coworker Harold has been with him eighteen years and Mike fifteen years. We follow Tony's eyes looking at these two middle-aged men. The camera returns to Tony's face, which subtly registers rejection of such a future for himself. No scowling or head-shaking, no sneering or shouldershrugging, just a studious assessment of the older men leading lives of "quiet desperation" and then, utter stillness. In just a few seconds, the movie crystallizes Tony's contemplation of a paint store career and his belief that he can do better. Tony may not yet know what he wants to do with his life, but he has begun to figure out what he does not want to do. Unlike his friends, Tony has become self-reflective.

Tony tells his father about his raise. Hearing that it is only $4.00 (a week), Tony's father makes fun of the amount, saying that it "won't even buy $3.00." Tony retorts, "I knew it. Go on, knock it. Just knock it!" Tony points out the meaning of the raise to him, to his self-esteem: "A raise says like you're good, you know. I mean, you know, how many times somebody told me I was good? Twice. Two times. A raise today and dancin'. Dancin' at Discotheque. You sure as hell never did." We see that Tony has to fight to maintain a sense of his self-worth. The parents have clearly favored Tony's older brother, Frank, the Catholic priest. When Frank announces that he has left the priesthood, the parents even try to blame Tony. They do not realize the foolishness of suggesting that the smarter, more mature brother should be swayed by dance-crazy Tony.

In fact, Tony has a loving relationship with his older brother, just as he does with his younger sister. The night Frank returns home with the devastating news that he is no longer a priest, he and Tony have a caring, candid heart-to-heart talk. Tony tells Frank that he is sorry and asks, "You got fired, huh?" Frank says that he quit and describes how upset their parents were to learn of his decision. Tony sensitively asks whether the parents asked why Frank quit and then says, "Didn't ask why or nuthin'?" Frank says that their parents, with their dream of "pious glory" turned him into what they wished: "You can't defend yourself against their fantasies. [. . .] All I really had any belief in was their image of me as a priest." Frank's priesthood had been a tribute to his parents as good parents and devout Catholics. Having listened thoughtfully to his boss painting a future for him at the store, Tony now quietly digests what Frank tells him.

As with their image of Frank as a priest, the parental projections about Tony are self-serving. If Tony is a loser and to blame for his brother's straying from the church, why then do his parents bear no responsibility for Frank's decision. Even Frank is not to blame. Scapegoating Tony enables the parents to keep all their other fantasies intact. But Tony is not buying their distorted version of him or the situation. Frank is mistaken about children not being able to defend themselves against the fantasies of their parents. Tony has been warding off his parents' negative fantasies about him, challenging their image of him as a failure whose $4.00 raise is a joke, as he struggles to discover who he can become. Perhaps Tony, less educated than his brother and seemingly less intelligent, is actually the stronger of the two.

We get another sample of Tony's humor when he jokes, "Guess we're gonna have to take your picture down from the mantel." Tony immediately sees that the shrine to Father Frank is no longer appropriate. Tony also reveals insight into the dynamics of the family, pointing out that he has always been the bum in the family while Frank was perfect. The conversation between the brothers concludes with Tony observing, "Maybe if you ain't so good, I ain't so bad." Tony is a diamond in the rough, a late adolescent full of potential who needs a lot of polishing.

During his brief stay at home, Frank goes with Tony to the disco. It is in this scene, about halfway through the film, that Tony gives a riveting solo dance performance. It begins with Tony taking a girl on the dance floor to show his brother how he dances. Watching Tony light up the dance floor, Frank is enthralled, seeing a side of his brother he had not realized existed. Tony soon leaves his unaccomplished partner and takes over the floor by himself, confident and at one with the music. With his platform shoes, flared trousers, and hair just so, Tony twirls and bends, struts and spins, glides and slides as if made of rubber. The camera follows him, again from every conceivable angle, including dizzying diagonal shots (somewhat innovative in '70s filmmaking). Tony rotates his hands in a series of captivating rolls, twists, and spirals. His movement is supercharged yet fluid. In one sequence, Tony is hyperkinetic, ready to burst apart at the seams, only to freeze momentarily, for dramatic effect. He is not just a dancer; he is also a performer. As Frank enthusiastically observes, the crowd "can't take their eyes off you." Tony's legs kick, bend, and split apart in a 180-degree angle. His hips gyrate and swivel. He leaps, lands in a split, and slides across the floor in a series of splits, only to rise and propel himself up and down on his knees in a disco variation of the traditional Russian dance. Jumping in the air, Tony executes a midair split, touching hands to outstretched toes. In one moment, Tony is a whirling dervish; in the next, a lithe and dapper Fred Astaire.

It is truly an electrifying dance, not so much a single routine as a cluster of numbers, each with a distinctive style, that unfold seamlessly out of one another. Tony moves spontaneously and easily from acrobatic display to softer ballet, with transitions that are inventive, even humorous-including exaggerated pelvic thrusts and flicks of imaginary perspiration from his forehead, in apparent parody of himself. His dancing talent gives him the confidence to have aspirations that will take him out of his neighborhood haunts. And his joy in dancing inspires Tony to imagine that he can find similar delight in work during each day of the week, not just on Saturday night.

Hello, Stephanie; Goodbye, Annette

Tony ends his partnership with Annette when he sees Stephanie rehearsing at the dance studio. She had exchanged flirtatious glances with Tony at the discotheque, but rebuffed his earlier overtures at the studio. Stephanie is svelte and moves with a grace that Annette lacks. She also has an air of superiority that Tony finds attractive. Tony kids her, saying, "Somebody told me you was practicin' to dance with me. Is that true?" He starts dancing around, flashing his winsome smile and suggests that they could be a "dynamite [dance] team." When Stephanie asks him how old he is, he says that he is twenty, but his honesty wins out, and he corrects himself: "Well, I'm nineteen at the moment, but I'll be twenty very shortly." Stephanie tells Tony that "there's a world of difference [between them], not just chronologically, but emotionally, culturally, physically [. . .]" Tony's disarming grin gets Stephanie off her high horse and into a coffee shop where they get to know one another.

Stephanie tells Tony of her work and ambitions. Where she works, the people are remarkable, "Brooklyn ain't-isn't-Manhattan." Everything is beautiful, the people and offices, over the bridge and across the water. We notice Stephanie's limitations when she mentions having seen the film Romeo and Juliet and Tony says that he read the play in high school, rightly attributing it to Shakespeare. Stephanie "corrects" him, explaining that Romeo and Juliet is by Franco Zefferelli (the director of the film version) and not Shakespeare. Tony defers to her, adding that he always wondered why Romeo did not wait longer to take the poison (when waiting would have revealed that Juliet was not, after all, dead). In her know-it-all manner, Stephanie declares, "That's the way they took poison in those days." The exchange reveals that Stephanie is a bit pretentious and that Tony thinks more seriously than we might have guessed. Stephanie says that she is ordering tea because it is more "refined," but she says it in her Brooklyn accent, while chewing gum. After telling Tony that she is taking a college course and is going to move into Manhattan, she explains that she is changing, growing: "Nobody has any idea how much I'm growing."

Stephanie agrees to be Tony's dance partner, but nothing more, nothing personal- echoing what Tony had earlier told Annette. When Tony presses her, she gives a painfully accurate rundown of what she imagines his life to be: living with his parents and splurging on Saturday night. She caps her description off with "you're a cliché. You're nowhere, on your way to no place." Stephanie reinforces the insistence of Tony's boss that he think about his future. And he does. With growing selfawareness, Tony discloses that he would like to get the high he gets from dancing someplace else. Having understood that his dancing cannot last forever, Tony seeks the excitement, self-expression, and creativity that he now finds only on the dance floor. He is beginning to envision the shape his future could take, a narrative sketch of who he might become. When Frank later asks him if he plans on doing anything with his dancing, Tony says that he does not know. But we know that Tony will think about Frank's suggestion and take to heart his brother's genuine enthusiasm for Tony's talent.

Stephanie and Tony practice together. The film uses their rehearsals to offer up more dance numbers and their developing relationship, but also to depict Tony's talent and sensitivity. When Stephanie shows him a new dance routine, Tony immediately picks it up and executes it flawlessly, a fine student of dance. Walking together after practice, Tony wonders aloud why they do not talk about how they feel when they are dancing. He is also a student of the psychology of dance, its emotional impact and the meaning it has for him. We realize that he is more contemplative about dance than Stephanie, more selfreflective than his friends, and sturdier than his brother in the face of parental fantasy. Tony, too, is changing, growing in ways that nobody realizes.

Bridge over Troubled Waters

Tony helps Stephanie move from Brooklyn to Manhattan, across the Brooklyn Bridge and into a new life. She is moving into an upscale brownstone that is being sublet to her by an older man, who unexpectedly comes down the stairs and gives Stephanie a kiss that is more than platonic. It is clear that he has been mentoring Stephanie, correcting her English and recommending books. Tony gives Stephanie a knowing, disappointed glance, and Stephanie looks abashed. On the trip back to Brooklyn, Tony confronts Stephanie about her relationship with the man. Stephanie defends their relationship on the grounds that without his help, "I'd be walkin' around like an idiot goin', 'I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.' And he helps me." Tony asks, "He helps you get in and out of the sack. That what he helps ya do?" Stephanie is ashamed and starts crying, "He helps me. What do you expect me to do, man, what do you expect me to do?" Driving across the bridge, Stephanie sobs, "I'm sorry," presumably for exchanging sex for help at work.

Sex in Tony's relationships with Stephanie and Annette is complicated and conflicted. On the one hand, Tony is a moralist, censoring Stephanie for cheapening herself by having sex with someone she does not love. In a similar vein, Tony had asked Annette to think about what kind of girl she was going to be (nice or a pig) when she had told Tony that she was ready to "make it" with him. These incidents would seem to indicate that for Tony, sexual intimacy is special and should not be treated lightly.

However, Tony does attempt fumbling sex with Annette when she threatens to lose her virginity with one of his friends, stopping their backseat contortions only when he discovers that she has no birth control. And at the end of the movie, in a brutal scene, Tony forces himself on Stephanie, again in the backseat of his friend's car. What has happened to his chivalry and lofty conception of sexual intimacy? Tony seems to be an equivocal character, neither here (on the side of sexual propriety) nor there (on the side of sexual license). Actually, the story is realistic in its portrayal of Tony's inconsistent or conflicted behavior. After all, he is not yet out of his teens and is still sorting out his values. Tony may well believe that sex is special and still yield to his erotic impulses. Just as Tony's brother has had to rethink his commitment to the church, so too does Tony have to rethink his attitudes toward sex and the value it really holds for him.

Tony tries to calm the distraught Stephanie. He tells her, "Don't worry about nuthin'," and stops at a park overlooking the river, with a picturesque vista of the Verrazano Bridge unfurling before them from the Brooklyn side. Tony proceeds to share his knowledge of the bridge and his recitation of impressive magnitudes is surprisingly soothing. He tells Stephanie that the tower is 690 feet high and that 40 million cars go across the bridge per year. The bridge is made of 127,000 tons of steel and almost 750,000 yards of concrete. The center span is 4,260 feet long and the entire bridge is 2.5 miles long, if you include the on-ramps. Saying that he knows "everything about that bridge," Tony recounts the misadventure of a construction worker who is buried in the cement, having fallen during work on the bridge. They laugh together at the dark humor. Stephanie touches the back of his neck and kisses his cheek, friendly with gratitude, but with a ripple of something more. It is an image that is reprised at the end of the movie.

Of course, bridges are fairly obvious metaphors or symbols. What makes the two bridges in the film symbolically effective, however, is their literal function within the story. Tony and his friends go to the Verrazano Bridge to horse around. In one scene, with the strains of Mussorgsky's ominous "Night on Bald Mountain" on the soundtrack (no cheerful disco here), the men dupe Annette into thinking that they have fallen off the bridge. A screaming Annette runs to the railing only to discover the tricksters safely perched on a platform hidden below view. This fooling around is repeated, with tragic effect, at the film's finale. Because the ending has been lightheartedly foreshadowed, it has greater dramatic impact. Tony also tells Stephanie that he often comes to the park to daydream as he looks out at the bridge. The Verrazano Bridge is part of a dreamscape, a place for Tony to fantasize and must be replaced in his life by the Brooklyn Bridge-the way into Manhattan and real possibilities.

For all her pretentiousness, Stephanie is onto something when she speaks glowingly of Manhattan. Life and work there are more interesting and offer more opportunity to young people than the blue-collar neighborhoods of Tony's Brooklyn. By embedding the symbolism of the Brooklyn Bridge as the route to a better life in the everyday experience of Stephanie and Tony, the film gives it narrative substance. By depicting the Verrazano as a boyish plaything the film aligns it with Tony's youthful past in contrast to a mature future emblematized by the Brooklyn Bridge. Moreover, crossing the bridge to Manhattan, symbolically, is difficult. It demands vision, courage, and a willingness to break with the comfort afforded by the familiar past. Those who lack these virtues, Tony's friends, are fated to be stuck in the ruts of Brooklyn-to return to play on the Verrazano Bridge or to fall into the cold river below.

The climax of the story takes place at the dance contest at the disco club. The film avoids the clichéd route of ending a story with a competition in which we root for the overmatched hero against devious or despicable enemies. It does so in several ways. First, Tony is not the underdog, and his dance opponents are neither underhanded nor unworthy, except in the eyes of Tony's sad, smallminded pals. Second, the contest is situated on the cusp of Tony's moral development and self-understanding. It is a larger climax for Tony, bringing to an end his old life, including such pastimes as the dance contest itself. Finally, the contest turns out to be a climax with an anticlimactic twist, letting Tony down so that he can rise above it.

Save the Last Dance for Me

Tony arrives at the contest with his cohort. Stephanie notices their bruises and bandages, but Tony makes light of their appearance with a joke and a smile. The boys had been in a fight with a Puerto Rican gang, supposedly to avenge the mugging of a member of their clique, Gus, who is in the hospital with contusions and broken bones. But the brawl was in vain, as Gus admits that he is not now sure that the gang the boys fought was really the one that attacked him. Tony and his battered mates are furious that they absorbed so much punishment, and might have suffered still more, for nothing. The mistake has greater significance for Tony. The wasted violence of the group adds to Tony's growing dissatisfaction with his life. The injuries seem to epitomize the bruising futility of his relationships with his peers and parents. Together with the outcome of the dance contest and the second trip to the bridge, the stupidity of the gang brawl will prove decisive for Tony.

The finale of the dance contest presents a cross-section of Brooklyn in the '70s, featuring couples who are black, Italian, and Puerto Rican. After the black couple finish, Tony and Stephanie begin their dance with a still moment, looking soulfully at one another. The music is the Bee Gees' song "More than a Woman," appropriate for the role that Stephanie plays in Tony's life. Their routine is elegant and cool, unlike the jerky and overwrought dance of the black couple that preceded them. Tony and Stephanie separate, then come together in smooth turns and fluid entwinement. Tony is dressed in a white suit, Stephanie in a light pink-white dress. Their outfits, the gauzily soft lighting, and their romantic dance number conspire to create an enchanted, heavenly image. As they turn, with Stephanie embraced in Tony's arms, they kiss languorously and stare into each other's eyes. They end their dance smiling, strutting single file off the dance floor, with Stephanie's arms resting on Tony's shoulders. The youthful crowd applauds and cheers the neighborhood favorites.

The Hispanic couple then brings the contest to its conclusion. Dancing to Latin rhythms with verve and élan, the female partner's dress flares, and her exposed legs strike the air, as if to announce from the onset that the pair is full of life and kicking up their heels to show it. As his friends mock the couple as "Spics," Tony admires their style and praises their performance. The male spins his partner, her legs fly out and down with controlled abandon. Where Tony and Stephanie were cool, as if descended from the stars in clothing spun of moonbeams, the Puerto Rican pair is hot, filling their routine with hitches, leaps, and swirling twirls of lusty red. Stephanie looks on nervously; Tony seems entranced. As the dance ends, the Italian boys proclaim, "No contest, man, no contest." Tony objects, "I don't wanna hear that. Dey, dey wuz better 'n us." Stephanie tempers the disagreement, declaring that they were not better, just different. Tony is remarkably able to see things clearly, without illusion: whether it is his brother's defection from the clergy, his self-worth under his father's derisive criticism, or here, in comparing his performance with the superb dancing of the Puerto Rican couple.

When the dj announces Tony and Stephanie as the winners, Tony shakes his head and looks sorrowfully at his cheering friends, convinced that the judging reflected a bias for the home-turf contestants. To the strands of "Stayin' Alive," Tony receives the trophy. He is mortified at being party to a deception, as if the falseness of the prize has cheapened dance itself. Tony's clear-sighted appreciation of the Hispanic dance number overrides the easy satisfaction that selfdeception about one's worth can provide. He tells his pals, "You phony idiots. You know who shoulda won that contest. My own friends can't even be straight with me. You gotta lie right through your teeth." Of course, their affection for Tony and racial prejudice may have led them actually to see Tony and Stephanie as the better dance team. But Tony is disgusted with his friends, banged up in a meaningless fight and blinded by their delusions. Telling Stephanie that the contest was rigged, Tony walks her over to the Spanish couple and hands them the trophy along with the first-place prize money.

Tony rejects the image his friends have of him as the king of disco. It is a fantasy that serves their needs, by elevating the image the friends have of themselves- they are, after all, buddies with this local dance star. Here we see Tony's virtues of honesty and integrity. People seem most prone to deceive themselves in areas of their lives that are basic to their identities and self-esteem. Refusing to fool himself about the art he loves and that gives him the greatest sense of self-worth, Tony appears ennobled in handing the trophy over to its rightful owners. But keeping the story realistic and Tony's character in perspective, the film immediately knocks him off his pedestal. First he manhandles Stephanie, forcing himself sexually on her, and then he hypocritically objects to Annette having sex with his friends. They push him away and rightly point out that Tony "doesn't give a damn about her." Clearly, Tony's integrity and sense of honor are flawed, which is to be expected in someone whose moral personality is still developing.

The men drive to the Verrazano Bridge to engage in their usual hijinks. This time, however, Bobby (Barry Miller) uncharacteristically joins in, to prove to his friends that he is no coward. Because he avoided the fight that bloodied the others, Bobby had been criticized as a punk. Trying to show off, he stumbles and dances precariously on the railing of the bridge. Tony urges Bobby to get down and reaches out to pull his wobbly friend out of danger. Tony cajoles the crying Bobby, saying, "Don't get upset. Come on. We'll talk," but Bobby reminds Tony that he did not call to talk when he said he would. Tony let Bobby down because he was preoccupied with helping Stephanie move and had forgotten his friend. Tony again reaches for Bobby, but his distraught pal turns awkwardly away, teeters, and tumbles off the bridge to his death. The men look on in horror as Annette shrieks and cries hysterically.

The police ask the group if they think Bobby killed himself. Tony observes, perhaps a bit too profoundly, "There are ways of killing yourself without killing yourself." Bobby was trapped. His girlfriend, Pauline, was pregnant, and he was being pressured to marry her by parents, priest, and high school guidance counselor. Throughout the story, Bobby has been seeking help, especially from Tony. He does not want to marry Pauline but feels boxed in because she will not get an abortion. On the day he had begged Tony to call him, Bobby described himself as paralyzed, saying, "I've got no more control."

Bobby personifies the difficulty of getting across that other bridge, the one that leads out of Brooklyn into a world of possibility. He lacks the courage to follow his own lights, to do what Tony's brother advised him to do-"what he thinks is right [for himself]" rather than what other people tell him to do. Bobby cannot cross the bridge but he also does not want to stay on the other side, the side that represents marrying Pauline, having a child, and being trapped for life. The only way out of this no-man's land, the middle of the bridge, is to give up. Bobby kills himself without killing himself in the sense that he is purposely careless, perhaps not intentionally jumping off the bridge, but allowing himself to lose his balance and fall off. Taking Tony's psychological observation further, as referring to himself, there are also ways of killing ourselves without giving up our lives. Staying at the paint store for the rest of his life, as Harold and Mike have done, may seem to Tony to be another form of suicide.

As a metaphor, then, the bridge offers three possibilities. We can cross it to the uncertain chance of a more rewarding life, and this takes courage. Stephanie has chosen this option with her move into Manhattan. Another possibility is to stay in Brooklyn-dull, but reassuring in its familiarity. This is the fate of Tony's friends. The third possibility is Bobby's. Too weak to cross the bridge but repulsed by the prospect of staying on the suffocating safe side, Bobby finds himself stranded in the middle. But there is no viable option between staying and leaving. It is not a choice so much as an inability to choose, and anyone who winds up there must lose his balance. Life presents irrevocable choices with no middle ground: priesthood or layman; pregnancy or abortion; marriage or refusal to marry; Brooklyn or Manhattan.

Tony turns from his departing friends and walks off by himself. He rides the trains (taking us back to the second shot in the film), standing and sitting, tortured and tired. Gone is the upbeat or carressing disco music on the soundtrack, replaced by a jangly, edgy, jazzlike score. Tony rides until dawn, winding up at Stephanie's brownstone, now accompanied once more by the Bee Gees singing, "How Deep Is Your Love." Stephanie opens the door to a contrite Tony. He apologizes for his rough treatment of her after the dance contest and then talks of getting his own place and working in Manhattan.

When Stephanie asks what kind of job he is planning on getting, Tony admits that he is not sure, but asserts, "I'm an able person. I can do these things." He tells Stephanie that he would like to be her friend, nothing romantic, and that they can help one another. When she teases him, asking whether he could really be friends with a girl, Tony smiles and confesses, "The truth? I dunno. But I'll try. That's all I can promise. I'll try." Stephanie says softly, "OK. We'll be friends. Just be friends." She clasps his hand, leans over him, and kisses his forehead. Stephanie puts her head next to his in a manner at once solicitous and sensuous. As the credits roll, the couple is frozen, framed by the dawn-filled window, Tony sitting on the window seat, a standing Stephanie leaning into him. Their relationship is as open-ended as Tony's future, but Tony is in Manhattan.

True enough, Tony does not enter Manhattan triumphantly, gliding across the Brooklyn Bridge, over the sparkling waters, with a terrific job in hand. Disheveled and somewhat forlorn, he slides under the river by public train. Tony will have to work his way up, as Stephanie has. But we have reason to think he has a fighting chance. Tony is smart and funny, good with people and able to learn. He also has moral virtues essential to success: determination, honesty, self-awareness, and integrity. Tony's integrity and honesty are demonstrated in his refusal of the first-place dance prize. His self-awareness and determination are expressed in his denial of the restrictive narratives projected for him by family, friends, and the paint store owner. He is cured of his Saturday night fever, ready to move on with his life. As with his moral personality, his narrative is incomplete. But Tony has begun to fill in the outline of the story through which he is determining who and what he will be. He may not be sure what exactly he is going to do, but he knows where he will do it and he is not too proud to ask for Stephanie's help in doing it.