Saturday Night Fever ***** (1977, John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller) – Classic Movie Review 1477

John Travolta’s first featured cinema big star role turned out to be his finest piece of acting right up until Pulp Fiction. He plays an Italian American boy called Tony Manero, a young man troubled with a rotten life and a dead-end job in Brooklyn who exists just to dance at the local disco.

Spending his weekends at the Brooklyn disco chelps him forget clashes with his unsupportive, squabbling parents, racial tensions in the local community, and his associations with a gang of macho friends. There also at the disco is Annette (played by Donna Pescow), Tony’s former dance partner and would-be girlfriend. But he falls for Stephanie Mangano (played by Karen Lynn Gorney), his new dance partner and eventual friend, who points the way to him living a much fuller, richer, better life.

Director John Badham’s 1977 release is a fast-paced, perceptive film, with a fine, incisive screenplay by Norman Wexler taken from a Nik Cohn magazine article, with sharp direction, revealing cinematography by Ralf D Bode, riveting dancing to the now poignantly dated but evergreen Bee Gees score, and a fresh, charming performance by Travolta.

Though it appears directed at young people, this is an adult 18-certificate film with 46 F-words and five C-words. The PG video and TV version is cut by 10 minutes for that strong language and the adult themes, but there’s no doubt the original film was much better.

A huge hit, the film helped to popularise disco music around the world and made Travolta a household name. The Bee Gees soundtrack is one of the all time best-sellers. All of the filming locations are in Brooklyn, New York, mainly in the south-western Brooklyn neighbourhoods of Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Bensonhurst.

The story is based upon a 1976 New York magazine article by British writer Nik Cohn, ‘Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night’. In the late 1990s, Cohn acknowledged that the article had been fabricated.

It was followed by the sequel Staying Alive (1983), which also starred John Travolta and was directed by Sylvester Stallone.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1477

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