Studio 54: Celebrity veneration and body fascism in 1977

Oh God. Not the photograph of Bianca Jagger on a horse. Don't show us the photograph of Bianca Jagger on a horse. The story of New York's Studio 54 – an uber-disco that defined 1970s excess – has been told so often that images have taken on the status of icons.

The descending Moon dipping its nose into a suspicious silver spoon. Geeky Steve Rubell playing St Peter by the velvet rope. Bianca Jagger on that bleeding horse.

A full 20 years ago, Mark Christopher's terrible 54 and Whit Stillman's delicious The Last Days of Disco paid different types of tribute to an institution that existed for just 33 months. One might reasonably ask why we need a documentary.

Matt Tyrnauer, director of Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, presents Ian Schrager as a persuasive witness for his case. Schrager, son of a mob-connected businessman from Brooklyn, who has said little on record before, joined forces with Rubell, a brasher, noisier presence, to launch the flash disco in April 1977. The opening night was mobbed.

Within weeks – thanks in no small measure to Bianca Jagger and her horse – Studio 54 had become an ear-bursting amalgam of upmarket bathhouse and bourbon salon.

Not about the music

Students of the era's innovative dance music must look elsewhere for elucidation. That's fair enough. Studio 54 didn't do much to develop the sounds. Its unhappy innovations were in the fields of celebrity veneration and body fascism.

Rubell and his staff brought indecent levels of relish to their policing of the door. If you were sufficiently famous, you and your horse would gain admittance, but further hierarchies might still be imposed. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would get in free, but lesser Rolling Stones were asked to pay. Among the hoi polloi, the issue was appearance: the right chin, the right chest, the right trousers. This is the world we live in now.

Schrager proves agreeable company and, though occasionally evasive, seems frank about his transgressions. His most vigorous wriggle comes when asked about the unorthodox bookkeeping that eventually led to his arrest for tax evasion. An awkward smile. An incomplete memory. Some corners are still too dangerous to be negotiated.

Never mind. Having gone on to become a successful hotel magnate, Schrager was pardoned by President Obama in 2017. That tells you more about the American understanding than anything else in this gripping, cautionary film.

• Opens June 15th