Staying Alive To Jive

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2009)

Saturday Night Fever holds a special place in the hearts of all the residents of Brooklyn. Besides being the visual symbol of the disco era, it is also the best filmed recollection of the post Dodgers era of Brooklyn which sad to say is still going on.
Brooklyn does not have the Dodgers any more and in fact the 2001 club is no longer there, but you can see a lot of the area that was photographed in Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton. I could even show you the places on tour.
But it's the music and story of Saturday Night Fever that has made it an enduring classic. John Travolta left the sweathogs of Welcome Back Kotter and broke out as a major film star playing Tony Manero in this film. Travolta's a kid working at a paint store in a dead end job, hanging out with his dead end friends who has only one great talent going for him. On Saturday night when he goes to the 2001, he's king of the dance floor.
He can get just about any girl he wants and quite a few would like him, especially Donna Pescow, but Travolta's got his eye on Karen Lynn Gorney who is of Italian background like himself, but has real career aspirations as a dancer. Travolta and Gorney agree to dance together, but John just can't let it go at that.
The only Oscar that Saturday Night Fever was nominated for was John Travolta as Best Actor. He lost that year to Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl. Travolta does a great job in playing Tony Manero, a kid who over the course of the film realizes there is a great big world out there beyond his neighborhood. A lot of things help convince him of that, his involvement with Gorney, his dancing, his dead ending friends one of whom meets with real tragedy.
Special mention should go to Barry Miller playing Bobby C, one of the Travolta friends. He's such a sad case trying so desperately to belong with the crowd. They tolerate him basically because he's got the car and he takes the gang where they want to go.
The Motion Picture Academy has committed some god awful blunders in its time. But one of the worst was its total non-recognition of the music of the Gibb Brothers and the other music from Saturday Night Fever. Saturday Night Fever was incredibly not even nominated for Best Musical Score. Not one of the songs from the BeeGees and others was nominated for Best Original Song from a Motion Picture. The winner that year was You Light Up My Life, a nice song, but has never had the enduring popularity of any number of the BeeGee tunes like How Deep Is Your Love, Staying Alive, You Should Be Dancing, or Night Fever.
The Brooklyn shown in Saturday Night Fever is a Brooklyn that most grew up with. Only old codgers like myself remember the Dodgers, but Saturday Night Fever is Brooklyn for the next couple of generations.