"Saturday Night Fever" (1977)

Nineteen year old Tony Manero lives for Saturday nights at the local disco where he is “the king of the dance floor” thanks to his impressive dance moves. But at home Tony fights constantly with his father and has to compete with his brother, a priest and the apple of his parents’ eyes. On top of this Tony works at a dead end job in a small hardware shop that he’s good at but isn’t passionate about. However, he soon meets Stephanie Mangano, who is also an avid dancer, and begins training with her for the club’s dance competition. Of course, as to be expected, things don’t run as smoothly as they would like… 

The film was directed by John Badham and starred John Travolta. I found it really interesting to know that more than 40% of the cast made their feature debuts in this film!

It felt so strange to me seeing John Travolta in a role like this just because he looks so young! I mean, his character has parents in this film! I’m so used of seeing him playing one of the parents! I’m not sure what to say to his character, Tony. On one hand he’s quite a vein person who takes tremendous pride in his appearance. His preoccupation with his hair was kind of funny. He’s so self-confident it could be taken as arrogance, but he just goes out and doesn’t give a crap what people think of him which kind of makes the character interesting. He’s a bit of an ass too though. Fun fact: John Travolta's sister Ann Travolta appears as the pizza lady, and his mother Helen Travolta appears as the woman for whom he gets the paint. I think this is pretty cool. 

I found the camera angles very noticeable; kind of interesting the way they’d go swiftly from one to the other. They were a bit distracting at first just because I was trying to figure out their purpose (just for my own curiosity) but it was ok since it didn’t take from the story. For the first while of the film John Travolta is just walking down the street! There are so many shots of the characters’ feet either dancing or walking and then close ups of their top half sort of looking upwards…if that makes sense. Particularly during the opening scene when Tony is walking down the street but also quite a bit during the club scenes. In fact, the only scene that does not feature John Travolta's feet is the one where he's comparing his shoe to the shoe in the store window! Interestingly, this was one of the very first films to utilize the Steadicam.

The music is iconic. There are so many songs I knew (because everyone does) but didn’t realise they came from this film! I knew of course The Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing” and “Stayin’ Alive” were in it, but ones like The Tramps’ “Disco Inferno”,  and The Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” I didn’t know. Apparently the soundtrack album sold over 20 million copies, and it was the top selling album in history until it was topped by Michael Jackson's album "Thriller" six years later. That is just crazy.

This film seems to be classified under “musical” but it didn’t feel like one to me! If it is then it’s a different kind of one because every musical I’ve seen involved the characters/actors singing in various scenes, while this one just had a lot of dancing and music that went on for a while. I like this version better I think. I don’t like when they go off on a tangent singing for too long and the story gets temporarily forgotten.

Night clubs were so different back then too. Now it’s all loud music that doesn’t always sound like music and that’s too loud to talk over; flashing lights and mist and crowds and drink. These characters were more preoccupied with dancing than drinking. Now it’s completely the other way around. This looks like a more care free time. Odd and strange, perhaps (their dance moves are gas). I would say these scenes were probably my favourite in the movie. The lighted wall and lighted floor where these scenes were filmed were not actually at the disco, but added in for the film. The "blinking light" effect on the wall was created by covering the wall in tin foil and reflecting blinking Christmas tree lights off of it. I think this is really cool. John Travolta had worked so hard on the "You Should Be Dancing" sequence and was really upset when the studio suggested it should be shot in close up instead of full-body. As a result of voicing his disappointment he was told to go back and sit with the editors and personally supervise a new cut of the solo sequence.

I also liked the scene when Tony and Stephanie are just talking about the bridge on this park bench. I like it because it’s kind of the moment Tony stops being such an ass and any of the front he’s putting on trying to be “cool” is sort of stripped away if just for one scene. I like the significance of the bridge to him. It features several times throughout the film since he and his friends frequently stop to mess about on it and have a laugh, but for Tony the bridge symbolizes a means of having a new start.

There were a number of rape scenarios in this film, none of which were made a big deal of. At least, not in the way they would be in a movie nowadays. There were two, I suppose, “important” women in the whole of the film and neither were treated with the greatest respect from Tony and his friends. I don’t know why I was surprised by this to be honest. I think my impression of what I knew about this film before watching it was that it was a lot more “innocent” than it actually was…if that’s the right word. I was just surprised. It was like that was just something that happened, something they did, get over it and move on. I don’t know. Just my impression. Actually on this note: apparently this was the first mainstream Hollywood movie in which the term "blow job" was used. Just a fun fact for you!

The other thing that shocked me was (sorry for the spoiler!) when one of their friends died, there was no real upset about it. No tears, no real acknowledgement from Tony. He was just disillusioned while still a bit self-preoccupied. Maybe this was just me.

Yeah…This film is alright. Personally I don’t think it’s one of the best in the world, but it’s not a bad one either! 

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