6. Saturday Night Fever (1977)
After a couple of brief, grand establishing shots of New York City's marvellous skyscrapers, Saturday Night Fever quickly descends into the seedy streets of 1970's Brooklyn. Local nightclub 2001 Odyssey acts the only respite for protagonist Tony Manero (John Travolta); with his dancing giving him a sense of purpose in a city where his friends are juvenile and his family are unsupportive. For its all iconic imagery of the seventies disco scene, Saturday Night Fever is actually a hard-hitting drama at heart, placing Travolta and the rest of its cast in the grimy Brooklyn streets filled with race hate, gang wars, violence, and rape. Brooklyn appears as little more than mundane by day, and lethal by night in SNF. Tony dreams of leaving, and at one point bursts into a ramble about the Varrazano-Narrows Bridge, revealing his obsession with the structure. Ultimately, it's a location that represents a means of escape for him away from the dull and dark setting of Brooklyn. Tony is visibly alienated by his New York surroundings as the movie ebbs on, reaching the point where he boards the dark depths of the subway for escape and rides it well into the night. For all its disillusionment of Brooklyn, SNF suggests that hopeful escape may lie across the bridge in Manhattan. The film's shoddy sequel "Staying Alive" proved otherwise.