Saturday Night Fever

Saturday Night Fever, American musical-drama film, released in 1977 and starring John Travolta, about a young Brooklynite who escapes his dead-end working-class life and family frustrations through disco dancing. The movie, written by Norman Wexler and directed by John Badham, was a critical and commercial success, propelling former television actor Travolta to superstardom and turning disco, previously an underground dance movement, into a mainstream cultural phenomenon. Its Bee Gees–produced soundtrack was just as popular, topping the Billboard 200 album chart for 24 consecutive weeks.

Plot and characters

Saturday Night Fever follows Tony Manero (played by Travolta), a cocky, 19-year-old Italian American man living in Brooklyn, New York, with his abusive and unemployed father, Frank, Sr. (Val Bisoglio); his overbearing mother, Flo (Julie Bovasso); his immigrant grandmother (Nina Hansen); and his younger sister, Linda (Lisa Peluso). Tony works in a hardware store by day and lives for his nights out at the 2001 Odyssey nightclub, where he dominates the dance floor.

After enduring a family dinner during which he is negatively compared to his older brother, Frank, Jr. (Martin Shakar), who is a Roman Catholic priest, Tony heads to the disco with his friends Joey (Joseph Cali), Double J. (Paul Pape), Gus (Bruce Ornstein), and Bobby C. (Barry Miller). At the club, a girl from the neighborhood, Annette (Donna Pescow), asks Tony to dance, but he insults her, telling her that she is not his “dream girl.” Nevertheless, they dance together, although a new face, the sophisticated and self-assured Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney), later catches Tony’s eye on the dance floor. Afterward, Annette proposes that she and Tony partner up for the disco’s upcoming dance contest. Tony agrees, but he stresses to her that their relationship is strictly platonic.

Back at home, Frank, Jr., announces that he is leaving the priesthood, which shames his parents and upsets the household even more. Meanwhile, Tony and Annette begin meeting at a dance studio to practice their routine. There Tony sees Stephanie, and he asks her to be his dance partner in the contest. They go out for coffee, and he learns that she has a job in Manhattan and many ideas for bettering herself. Sensing that she has outgrown young men like Tony, she tells him, “You’re a cliché, you’re nowhere on your way to no place.” After Tony becomes defensive, she tells him she is taking college courses and suggests that he try doing the same. Tony confesses that dancing gives him a high and says, “I would like to get that high some place else in my life.” Stephanie agrees to be his dance partner but makes it clear that she does not want to date him.

Tony learns that Gus is in the hospital after getting beat up by the Barracudas, a Hispanic gang, and that Bobby is getting married. Tony and his friends cruise around the neighborhood, looking to retaliate against Gus’s attackers. On another night, Frank, Jr., joins Tony and his friends at the club, where Bobby confides to Frank that his girlfriend is pregnant and that he does not want to marry her. At the same time, Tony’s dancing draws the admiration of everyone at the club. As Frank tries to enjoy his night out and watch his brother on the dance floor, Bobby asks him if the pope would give his girlfriend a dispensation for an abortion. Frank breaks it to Bobby that this is unlikely.

Though they are no longer dance partners, Annette continues to make advances at Tony, which he entertains until learning that she is not using birth control. That night, Tony and his friends drive with Annette to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, where they terrify her with their daredevil stunts. Later, Frank, Jr., tells Tony that he should continue to dance and that he should ignore their family’s criticism.

One day, after driving to Manhattan to help Stephanie move, Tony discovers that she had been having an affair with an older man to help her career in public relations. She then tearfully reveals that her new life in Manhattan is not all she has made it out to be. To console her, Tony takes her to a park with a view of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and he reveals his deep interest in the bridge and how it inspires him.

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Later, Tony and his friends fight with the Barracudas, but after visiting Gus in the hospital, they learn that he is unsure if he was actually beaten by the Barracudas or if it was another gang.

The night of the dance competition finally arrives. As contestants take their turns, a talented Black couple is booed by the audience. When Tony and Stephanie perform, to the Bee Gees’ “More Than a Woman,” they share a tender, unexpected kiss on the dance floor. They are awarded first place, but Tony believes that the contest was rigged in his favor and that the runners-up, a Puerto Rican couple, deserved to win. He gives them the trophy and the prize money, much to the disgust of his friends.

Riled up by his friends’ immaturity and racism, Tony tries to force himself on Stephanie after she turns down his sexual advances, and she leaves. Tony is then joined by his friends and Annette, and as Bobby drives them to the bridge, Joey and Double J. rape Annette. She begins to cry when Tony does not stop them, and runs out of the car after they arrive at the bridge, where Tony apologizes to her. Then an emotionally distraught and intoxicated Bobby climbs onto one of the bridge’s beams, slips off the edge, and falls to his death.

After riding the subway all night, Tony visits Stephanie the next morning at her apartment. He tells her that he is going to get a job in Manhattan, and they reconcile, holding hands as they agree to be friends.

Background and production

The film was based on an article published in New York magazine in 1976 by Nik Cohn, titled “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” which turned out to be mostly fabricated. Producer Robert Stigwood purchased the article’s film rights, and Travolta, mostly known for playing preening high-school student Vinnie Barbarino in the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–79), was cast in the lead role. John G. Avildsen was initially hired to direct, but he was replaced by John Badham because of “conceptual disagreements.”

Commercial and critical reception

The movie’s opening weekend grossed almost $4 million at the domestic box office, coming in second to Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction flick Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (In 1979 a PG-rated version that cut out seven minutes of the movie’s sexual content, profanity, and violence was released in theaters.) The film was also a critical success, with critics praising its performances (especially Travolta’s) and dark yet transcendent subject matter, which Pauline Kael summed up in her review for The New Yorker as “how the financially pinched seventies generation that grew up on TV attempts to find its own forms of beauty and release.”

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune cited it as his favorite film, claiming that he saw it at least 17 times. He also paid $2,000 for the famous white polyester suit worn by Travolta in the dance competition scene, which he auctioned off years later for $145,000. After Siskel’s death in 1999, his fellow Chicago-based movie reviewer Roger Ebert wrote a tribute to his friend and the film:

We all have a powerful memory of the person we were at that moment when we formed a vision for our lives. Tony Manero stands poised precisely at that moment. He makes mistakes, he fumbles, he says the wrong things, but when he does what he loves he feels a special grace. How he feels, and what he does, transcend the weaknesses of the movie he is in; we are right to remember his strut, and the beauty of his dancing. “Devote your life to something you love—not like, but love,” Siskel liked to say. “Saturday Night Fever” is about how Tony Manero does that.

Soundtrack

The film’s soundtrack features several original songs by the Bee Gees and contributions by Tavares, Yvonne Elliman, the Trammps, Kool & the Gang, and KC & the Sunshine Band. Wildly successful, the chart-topping album earned the Bee Gees three number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100: “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” and “How Deep Is Your Love.” Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You” also reached number one. The soundtrack garnered four Grammy Awards, including album of the year. Up until the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982), the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was the best-selling album of all time. In 2012 it was added to National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Awards and legacy

Saturday Night Fever was Travolta’s breakout performance, and two of his scenes—Tony’s strut through Brooklyn to “Stayin’ Alive” during the opening credits and, later, a sensational dance solo—are considered among the most memorable moments in cinema. Travolta was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor, but he lost to Richard Dreyfuss for his role in The Goodbye Girl. In 2010 Saturday Night Fever was added to the National Film Registry, a film preservation program established by the U.S. Library of Congress that selects films of cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.