SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER.
Starring John Travolta and
Karen Gorney. Directed by
John Badham. At the Capitol
Six, Vancouver and Guildford
Cinema, Surrey.

For five or six days a week, 19-
year-old Tony works in a paint
store in his rundown Italian
section of Brooklyn, New York.

His father is a cynical, un-
employed construction worker,
his mother a haggard housewife
who makes tasteless spaghetti
sauce. Both .constantly berate
Tony for not being more than he
is.
“*You should have been a priest
like your brother,” says his
mother. “‘Then you wouldn’t have
to worry about a job.”

But on Saturday night
everything is different. On
Saturday night Tony’s the best,

Odyssey, the local disco. For that
brief, all-important period he
rises above the squalor and
frustration of reality.

Saturday Night Fever portrays
Tony’s search for a way of life
that will give him a firmer grasp
on that transitory ‘‘high” he gets
on the dance floor.

The key to that new lifestyle is

‘Stephanie who, like Tony, is a
superb dancer. She agrees to be
his partner in an upcoming dance
contest but is less enthusiastic
about a more personal relation-
ship. ‘‘You’re a cliche,”’ she tells
him, “‘nowhere, on your way to no
place.”’

Stephanie comes from a
similar background but, unlike

ea has taken steps to break

the king of the dance floor at 2001.

The dance
that ends.
nowhere

out of it: an apartment across the
river in Manhattan where
everything is “beautiful,” and a
job at an agency where she meets
big recording and movie stars.

Comparisons have been made
between Saturday Night Fever
and Rebel Without A’Cause, the
1955 film that did so much to
make James Dean’s brief career
so memorable to so many people.

Both concern young people’s
aimless, even self-destructive
attempts to fight the alienation of
a society they can’t understand,
let alone control. ‘

Saturday Night Fever,
however, is a significant im-
provement over Rebel because
director John Badham seems
more willing to get his artistic
hands dirty, so to speak, than the
makers of Rebel were (under-
standably; in 1955, the Cold War
was in full swing, and those
cinematic artists who rocked the
boat had already been forced out
of the industry).

James Dean’s character in
Rebel came from a comfortable
middle-class background, his
rebelliousness the product of ill-

_ defined psychological currents in

his home and society.

The net result was one of
seemingly inevitable tragedy, a
feeling that such alienation

springs from a permanent
“generation gap” that_can never
be bridged.

But in Saturday Night Fever,
Tony is the victim of somewhat
more tangible forces. His family,
his friends, his whole world is
forever perched on the dividing
line between relative financial
security and poverty, with the
fickle winds of economics having
more to do with which way the
situation tips than his own best
efforts.

He lives in a social environ-:
ment filled with cynicism. When
advised by his employer to save
for the future, Tony replies,
“Screw the future.”’

“You can’t screw the future,”’
he is warned. ‘‘The future screws
you.”

Tony reacts like any other
young person would. He retreats
into a world of carefully
cultivated unreality, into his
bedroom with its posters of
Farah-Fawcett, Bruce Lee and
Rocky and, ultimately, to the
dance floor of 2001 Odyssey.

But in the aftermath of the
dance contest Tony realizes that
all the family squabbles, the
rumbles with rival gangs of
Puerto Ricans, the impersonal
sex, even the competitive dan-
cing are all aspects of the same
phenomenon: victimized in-
dividuals striking out in blind
frustration at the closest human
targets available, all of it leading
to deeper entrapment in a vicious
cycle. ' ;

This is the real climax of
Saturday Night Fever. Director
Badham, however, has inserted a
rather artificial additional

climax, so strongly reminiscent
of Rebel Without A Cause as to be
predictable. And in making this
concession to popular melo-
drama, he obscures his own
theme in a fog of cheap
theatricality.

‘ Still, I think the over-all result
is quite positive. Badham has
explored some problems of
contemporary society without the
stifling cynicism that charac-
terizes a number of other recent
movies such as Taxi_ Driver.
Beyond that, he’s made a very
entertaining film.
The acting of the two main |

performers — John Travolta as

. with two left feet and a less-than’

—— ae

Tony, and Karen Gorney
Stephanie — bring a refreshingly
down-to-earth quality to thei!
characters and are well
supported by those
numerous minor roles as Tony’
family, friends and dancing
partners.

And the dance sequences aré
fantastic; the combination 0
music and photography are g
enough to excite even those of us

overwhelming love of disc?
All things considered, you

could do a lot worse for $3.75.
Young Worke!

‘My music |

For the more than 600 people who
thronged the Queen Elizabeth
Theatre last Sunday to hear Angel
Parra and who twice brought him
back to the stage with standing
ovations, the attitude of official
circles in Ottawa to this Chilean
singer was, at least for the
moment, unimportant. But to
Angel Parra, those official circles
maintain an air of hostility.

Before he was able to come to
this country for the two-week
concert tour, he was compelled to
furnish a letter of reference from a
brother-in-law who is resident in
Canada. He had to put up $60 for
every day he intended to stay in
Canada and to show proof that he
had a return ticket from Paris

where he now resides. At the,

airport, he was detained for an
hour in a room by himself as im-
migration authorities deliberated
with a practised lack of speed.

For other performers of such
stature there are, of course, no
such restrictions. But for Angel
Parra, whose songs have been
heard around the world and have
become a symbol of the Chilean
-struggle, the door is all but barred.
The official policy that saw the
Canadian government become one
of the first to recognize the fascist
junta in 1973, still lingers.

Despite the restrictions, Parra’s
stark, powerful songs resounded
from the stage at the Playhouse
concert. They will be heard again
in concerts in Edmonton, Toronto
and Quebec. Winnipeg had already
hosted a performance January 28.

But in Chile, the silence remains.
The voices of the Parra family
which was such a vital part of the
Chilean cultural renaissance are
barred from the radio or television.
Arecord which Parra released just
days before the coup — based on
the experiences of Chilean com-
munist Volodia Teitelboim in the
concentration camp at Pisagua in
1946 — was seized after Sept. 11
and destroyed in the junta’s fury of
book-burning.

ae

ANGEL PARRA...
people.

“Everything I wrote about in the
songs on that record has since
come to pass in Chile under the
military junta,’’ Parra, speaking
in an interview after his concert,
says.

He himself was.a victim of the
state of siege that the junta im-
posed after the coup. ‘I was
arrested on Sept. 14,” he recalls,
*“‘and I was taken to the national
stadium.” :

He remained a prisoner in the
stadium until it was closed and the
prisoners transported to the
concentration camps that now dot
the length and breadth of Chile’s
landscape. Parra was taken to
Chacobuco in the north, a huge

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 3, 1978—Page 6

ie:

s part of Ch

*.
be,

—Sean Griffin photo

in his music, the voices of the embattled Chilean

rectangular compound which, at

that time, held 1,200 prisoners

within its barbed wire fences.
With him among the other

‘prisoners who arrived in Chaco-.

buco, was a famous Communist
historian, Mario Cespedes, whose
lectures on Chilean history had
been an immensely popular
feature on Chilean television
during the Allende administration.
Both became special targets for
the camp authorities.

“When the guard read our
names, he said: ‘So, Parra,
Cespedes, you are here!’ From
that time we were singled out for
special punishment.”’ A

Yet within the prison world,

ile’s struggle’

surrounded by wire, guards and
machine guns, he managed to
revive the musical spirit. Without
his guitar, without music or any
instrument, he organized a small
choral group of prisoners and
composed a work for them based
on biblical sources.

“We chose the Passion of St.
John,’’ says Parra, ‘‘because it
tells the story of the persecution
and torture of Jesus Christ. It was

the only way to answer the re-.

pression of the regime.”

For three months, he remained
in Chacobuco. Then suddenly,
amidst the impersonal list of
names read out over the loud-
speaker, he heard his own name.
The voice told him to line up with
the others on the following day.

“The next day he was taken to
Santiago, first to the air force
depot and then to the Chile Stadium
— without explanation.

‘We slept that night on the floor
without knowing what was _ hap-
pening to us, waiting for the
sergeant to tell us. Then suddenly,
at three o’clock, the doors were
opened and I found myself on the
street.”

Parra madehis way home where
his family, still fearing for his life,
awaited. They themselves, his wife
and sons, had been subjected to
numerous searches but were
otherwise unharmed. - -

After a month, he went to the
authorities to ask if he could again
give performances. The answer
was swift: ‘Your songs bring
nostalgia for the Popular Unity
government.”’ Parra was com-
pelled instead to drive a truck for
his living. After eight months, the
silence was too suffocating — he

. chose exile from Chile.

With him as he left he took many
new songs, now deepened with his
feelings of anger and suffering.
Behind him he left a Chile that the
fascist junta had turned into a vast
prison. —

Although world solidarity has
forced considerable isolation of the

music.
—Shane Parkhill

fascist regime, Chile remains ?
prison — despite the muct
heralded referendum by whie!
Pinochet sought to demonstrat
“support” for his dictatorship.

“The referendum was a circus;
Parra declares. ‘But it was

’

tragic circus in which the people
Chile were forced to take part.
It was widely acknowledged tha!

‘the vote was rigged but the exte®

of the rigging was not wid
publicized. The ballots were 4
transparent enabling authorities
see clearly how every pers
voted. In some rural parts of t
country, there were two. ball
boxes — one for ‘“‘yes’’ votes, 0
for ‘‘no.”’

Parra also notes that the reféf

endum was a further means a

control over the people sint
authorities clipped off the cor
from citizens’ identity cards af
they voted. Since voting we
compulsory, all those who wel
later found to have identity cart
without the clipped corner woul!
be subject to reprisals.

Under such conditions, {0
anyone. to vote ‘‘no”’ or even i)
boycott the vote would be f
tremendous act of courage al!
defiance. Yet even by his ow
admission, Pinochet received onl
a 75 per cent mandate. T
resistance grows.

And how does Angel Parra s¢
his place in that resistanc?
“Those of us in the Chilean Som#
Movement use a cultural @
pression to talk about the events
Chile, to denounce the junta®
violation of human rights, to rais!
the issue of the 2,500 disappearé!
prisoners. — ;

“This is the commitment, ne

ns

SI st nD Peyeoa xt oOo Ss abo

@

Ny

sS-— oOo Qf chem @ DD Ss a Zs Ss Om ao

lan Ml > ht He > - Ao Pee

only of singers, writers, but of 2 -

those in the anti-fascist strugg!®
‘For my part, my music is my
means of communication — all
wherever I have had an OF
portunity to tell people about Chil
I have found friendship at”

solidarity.” :
—Sean Gri