In March 1978 Saturday Night Fever hit the screens around Italy. Audiences in the country had a particular interest in John Travolta’s character Tony Manero, a young Italian-American worker from Brooklyn who loves to dance to disco music. Despite New York’s spells under mayors Fiorello La Guardia (1934–45) and Vincent Impellitteri (1950–54) the Italian Americans in the film are at the bottom of the heap and get involved in racialized clashes with others in a similar position. The pretexts of the fights between gangs are always the same: controlling territory, and women.

The plot structure of the film is almost banal, but Saturday Night Fever is also colored by a realism that exposes the awful combinations of masculinity and macho: pride, violence, honor, rape. But Tony seems rather less like this, because at the end of the film he hands over the coveted dance contest trophy to the deserving Puerto Rican couple, who had been victims of the audience’s discrimination. This helps pacify the racial conflict and lays the ground for his own redemption as a positive character.

For Tony, the dance is something pure: he wants to show off on the dancefloor and demonstrate his talent, something not to be polluted by class, or race. So far, so American. But the film, and the rise of disco off the back of the film, also had a particular effect in Italy. This was not least true among the youth of its mighty Italian Communist Party (PCI).