How I finally caught 'Saturday Night Fever'

John Travola in Saturday Night Fever

Sometimes it me takes multiple viewings of a so-called "classic" to fully appreciate them.

For instance, I didn't fall for Raging Bull until I'd seen it a couple times. I've had a similar slow coming around when it comes to Saturday Night Fever.

The first time I saw this 1977 drama it was in a severely edited form on VH1. I enjoyed it largely for its phenomenal soundtrack. I caught it later on Netflix when I was much older and was so put off by its darker moments.

It was jarring in tone and for a movie remembered nostalgically as fun its scenes of rape and racism were anything but quaint.

Finally on my third viewing I caught up with what the movie was trying to do. It is a rough movie and authentic in its portrayal of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn during this particular period.

John Travolta can be a very compelling actor when he wants to be. He is so disarming in this movie. Likable, brash and convincing as a boy trying to become a man amid a sea of ignorance and immaturity. His actions are often unforgivable and yet like a great Scorsese hero you are plunged into his world and are therefore forced to identify with him.

It's hard in 2014 to get past the Bee Gees-dominated soundtrack, the fashions, the inherent camp of much of the movie but if you do and just focus on the story it's actually quite relevant. It's about class. It's about trying to break free of the constraints of the family, the church -- whatever oppresses you.

It's at the disco where Travolta's Tony Manero character can escape the confines of his working class existence.

Travolta as Tony Manero

He primps and prepares himself from head to toe and for a few short hours he can rule the dance floor. He basks in comparisons to Al Pacino (a 70s-era heartthrob for the Bay Ridge crowd) and earnestly rehearses for a dance competition at a local studio.

It's a heavy film -- there is death and tragedy outside the disco -- but it is also a fabulously funny one.

The female love interest (described by one character as "practicing to become a bitch") is a hilarious riff on the Brooklyn girl who thinks she's somehow better than her peers because she has adopted Manhattanite pretensions.

Travolta has all these glorious malapropisms that according to director John Badham were largely improvised.

For instance, in one scene, Travolta's dance partner asks him if he invented a dance move himself. He quickly replies yes but then says he first saw it on television "before he invented it." It makes no sense and yet it makes perfect sense.

Modern viewers will likely cringe (and they should) at the film's denouement which features an attempted rape and shortly thereafter a gang rape.

These are very painful, difficult scenes to watch in which all of the characters, including our nominal hero, show their worst inclinations. And yet, there is a truth to these moments. These awful encounters do take place and they are as much a part of the fabric of the culture depicted as the fantastic dancing.

Of course it is the dancing that has endured and is best remembered from the film and with good reason. Travolta is a beast on the dance floor, at times he resembles a peacock.

This movie really captures the joy of dancing, the pure adrenaline rush of it. The choreography may be of another era and decidedly white, but their sheer energy is contagious.

I must admit after all these years I finally have the fever.