Still Stayin' Alive, More Than 40 Years Later

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2019)

Where to begin??
Is it the polyester suits? Is it the disco mirror balls? Is it the Bee Gees? Is it the charisma of John Travolta?
Well, the answer to all four of these questions is YES.
More than four decades since it was unleashed onto a not-entirely-unsuspecting world at the end of 1977, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER remains one of the cultural touchstone movies of the late 1970s, admittedly dated in some places (sometimes a bit too painfully obvious), but timeless in far more ways than one. Its story of Travolta's working-class New York City tough Tony Manero getting onto the dance floor at the 2001 Odyssey club and showing his stuff to escape his oppressive family life, but seemingly unable to commit to either one of the two women (Donna Pescow; Karen Lynn Gorney) that he finds there, is a true microcosm, not only of the era in general but also of the much-reviled Disco craze in particular. Nik Cohn's story "Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night" provided a whole lot for screenwriter Norman Wexler to conjure up, and he had a lot of help from Travolta, who had first become a star on TV via the 1976 TV film THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE and the hit TV sitcom "Welcome Back Kotter", then on the big screen as Nancy Allen's toady boyfriend in Brian DePalma's 1976 horror classic CARRIE. He is also helped by the sure-footed (to use a well-turned phrase) direction of John Badham, who had had many credits for television but, prior to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, only one big screen credit (1976's THE BINGO LONG TRAVELLING ALL-STARS & MOTOR KINGS). Besides all the great dance sequences, there is also the famous scene of Travolta and his friends playing a dangerous game of chicken on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge while a horrified Pescow looks on, set to "Night On Disco Mountain", a discofied adaptation, by David Shire, of Modest Mussorgsky's terrifying 1867 symphonic tone poem "A Night On Bald Mountain".
Made for what nowadays seems like a ridiculously low budget of only $3 million, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER was not only a huge box office hit, grossing something like close to a quarter of a billion dollars, but also unleashed a 2-LP soundtrack album that went on to spend twenty-six straight weeks atop Billboard's album chart and sell close to 40 million copies, making it one of the most successful album releases ever. That the film should have been as successful as it was is kind of amazing even now, considering how rough the street language in it was, making it unsuitable for unaccompanied minors and thus warranting the 'R' rating that it got. Even so, it's hard to forget the impact it had on popular culture, with a wall-to-wall soundtrack that included not only the Bee Gees, but Yvonne Elliman, MFSB, Ralph MacDonald, Tavares, KC and the Sunshine Band, and many more-a soundtrack that still keeps selling like crazy even to this day.
It is instructive to look back at this film, and realize that the craze it depicted was the subject of a lot of invective from the so-called "Disco Sucks!!" crowd, a bunch of disaffected rock and roll fans of the time who railed against Disco as a "threat" to their music, which, being a classic rock fan myself, I always found overblown. Rock music wasn't consumed by either the Disco craze or by this film and its soundtrack, far from it. Given that, and everything contained in it, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER remains a truly classic film, worthy of many viewings.