The influences behind The Last Days of Disco

1998

The Last Days of Disco

Film by Whit Stillman

American independent cinema. United States. In English.

Whit Stillman's 1998 comedy of manners follows two young Manhattan publishing assistants, Alice and Charlotte, and the men around them at an exclusive disco in the early 1980s as the scene collapses. It completes the loose trilogy begun with Metropolitan and Barcelona and joins Austen-style social comedy to an elegy for a vanished nightlife.

Where it came from

Where to watch

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1814

Mansfield Park

Jane Austen

Regency. England. Written in English.

Novel of the poor, principled Fanny Price among her wealthy cousins and the worldly Crawford siblings.

What it handed down

To The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Stillman's comedies are routinely read as Austen transposed to modern Manhattan, and he later adapted Austen's Lady Susan as Love & Friendship. In Last Days the quiet, scrupulous Alice and the brittle, manipulative Charlotte play out a contrast close to Fanny Price and Mary Crawford.

To Metropolitan

Direct source, well documented.

Metropolitan explicitly discusses Mansfield Park: Audrey defends the novel and Fanny Price, while Tom admits he knows it only through Lionel Trilling's essay. The film's plot of a modest, steadfast girl and a lofty young man misled by a more worldly rival echoes Austen's novel.

Where it came from

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1798

Lovers' Vows

Elizabeth Inchbald

Georgian. England. Written in English.

Inchbald's English adaptation of a Kotzebue melodrama about an illegitimate son and a forthright heroine.

What it handed down

To Mansfield Park (1814)

Direct source, well documented.

The Bertram young people rehearse Lovers' Vows in Sir Thomas's absence, and the play's roles let Henry Crawford flirt openly with Maria. Austen chose the play for its improper situations, and the theatricals episode is the moral crux of the first volume.

Where it came from

The Love Child (Das Kind der Liebe), August von Kotzebue 1790

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The Love ChildAugust von Kotzebue

1790

The Love Child (Das Kind der Liebe)

August von Kotzebue

Late Enlightenment. Germany. Written in German.

Sentimental German play about a soldier, his abandoned mother and the baron who seduced her.

What it handed down

To Lovers' Vows (1798)

Direct source, well documented.

Inchbald adapted Kotzebue's play for Covent Garden, toning down some of its frankness while keeping the plot of the illegitimate son and the outspoken Amelia.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch; Kotzebue's sources in German sentimental drama are not followed.

Find “The Love Child (Das Kind der Liebe)” on Amazon

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Last Days of Disco (1998)

To Metropolitan

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Mansfield Park (1814)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Lovers' Vows (1798)

Where it came from

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