Saturday Night Fever
Era-defining 1970s American classic starring John Travolta in his breakout role as a disco-dancing delinquent. The movie and its Bee Gees-dominated soundtrack brought the disco movement into the global mainstream and catapulted Travolta, previously a minor television celebrity, to stardom.
19-year-old Tony (Travolta) is a bored paint-store clerk who is constantly at odds with his parents at home, overshadowed by his successful older brother. His Brooklyn neighbourhood is overrun by gangs, and all of his friends are gang members. When the weekend rolls around Tony escapes mundane reality at the discotheque, where he's the undisputed king of the dancefloor. One night he meets Stephanie, a secretary who has grand aspirations of moving to Manhattan. Together they start training for the club's dance competition.
Saturday Night Fever is based on a 1977 New York Magazine feature article titled 'Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night', a profile of the glamourous and violent new anti-hippy counter-culture, by British rock journalist Nik Cohn. The article focussed on American-Italian 18-year old Vincent - a store clerk who mesmerised others on the dancefloor when he cut loose on a Saturday night, and was even offered money to dance. But in 1994 Nik Cohn admitted to The Guardian that 'Vincent' was entirely fabricated and "inspired by a Shepherd’s Bush mod" he'd known in the '60s.
The film's 1983 sequel, Staying Alive was directed by Sylvester Stallone and sees Tony striving to make it as a dancer on Broadway.
- Director:
- John Badham ('The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings', 'Bird On A Wire')
- Writer:
- Norman WexlerNik Cohn
- Cast:
- John TravoltaKaren Lynn GorneyBarry MillerJoseph CaliPaul PapeDonna PescowBruce OrnsteinJulie BovassoMartin ShakarSam Coppola
Reviews & comments
The New York Times
pressJohn Travolta is so earnestly in tune with the character that Tony becomes even more touching than he is familiar and a source of fierce, desperate excitement. The movie, which spends mercifully little time trying to explain Tony, has a violent energy very like his own.
The New York Times
pressJohn Travolta is so earnestly in tune with the character that Tony becomes even more touching than he is familiar and a source of fierce, desperate excitement. The movie, which spends mercifully little time trying to explain Tony, has a violent energy very like his own.
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