For nineteen-year-old Tony Manero (John Travolta), the only respite from his go-nowhere daily existence is the time he spends on the dance floor at 2001 Odyssey, one of Brooklyn’s most popular discothèques. The club is holding a dance contest, and Tony knows he can win if he can persuade Stephanie Mangano (Karen Gorney), the only other patron with dance skills to match his own, to be his partner. Despite her initial reservations--and snotty attitude--Stephanie agrees, and their time together opens Tony’s eyes to the larger world beyond his neighborhood.

CRITIQUE

It’s been mocked, scoffed at, parodied, and ripped off for the past thirty-two years, but none of that changes the simple fact that Saturday Night Fever (1977’s other cinematic touchstone) is a great movie. Yes, you read that right--this is a great movie. The clothes, dance moves, and music may be dated, but nothing else is. Remove the ‘70s trappings and what you have is a classic coming-of-age story, one that still has a tremendous resonance.

Anyone coming to this movie for the first time should know that it’s not a dance movie; it’s no more a dance movie than Mean Streets (to which Fever can favorably be compared) was a pool hall movie. Unlike Step Up or Stomp the Yard, which are nothing but excuses to stage dance sequences that have obviously been choreographed down to the last detail, Saturday Night Fever is about characters who dance to express themselves, to hook up, to blow off steam, to get away from their daily routines, to stroke their egos, and because everyone else is doing it--but they could just as easily be doing something else (if there were anything else for them to do).

And in another refreshing difference from modern dance flicks, dancing doesn’t hold all of the answers for these characters; entries in the new breed always end with a dance that somehow manages to make everything okay and set the characters off on a sunny path to happiness. That’s not the case with Fever; this movie is melancholy and dark, with an ending that doesn’t provide an easy fix.

Norman Wexler’s script (which was inspired by a New York magazine article by Nik Cohn, who would later admit he’d made the whole thing up) is surprisingly (even after all this time) nuanced and layered. The characters are so deftly sketched, and the story so filled with knowing details and dialogue (the scene in which Tony and Stephanie go out for coffee is so good it alone should have nabbed Wexler an Oscar nomination), that the movie feels genuinely authentic.

From the uneasiness of Tony’s home life to the casual racism and sexism that he and his friends wear as a badge of honor to the way Tony hangs his hopes on Stephanie and his friends hang their hopes on him, the story (and the movie plays like a good short story, offering us a probing look into a specific slice of these characters’ lives) gets it exactly right.

There comes a time in life for a lot of people when they think they know everything but really know nothing, and are coasting along with either zero concern for their future or the misguided belief that just one little opportunity will turn everything around; Saturday Night Fever offers a near-perfect portrait of that attitude, and it’s for that reason that the movie struck a chord and is so effective and relatable. (Had Richard Price set one of his early novels in the disco scene, it might’ve been quite similar to Saturday Night Fever. Aside from the Mean Streets comparison, I can think of no higher compliment.)

The only misstep in the movie comes in the sequence involving the Puerto Rican gang. I understand that the implications and consequences of the sequence are necessary to set up Tony’s actions late in the movie, but the scene itself simply doesn’t work. It feels as if it’s been pulled from a different, lesser movie.

And now for the obligatory section on the music: I can remember a time when everybody and his grandmother owned a copy of the soundtrack (my grandmother didn’t, but only because she couldn’t afford both it and Frampton Comes Alive!), and I also remember when The Bee Gees were unjustly lumped in with disco acts and suffered the same backlash.

Regardless of what anyone thinks, the songs the Brothers Gibb contributed to the movie are still some of the slickest, catchiest, best-produced mixes of pop, rock, funk, and R&B popular music has ever brought forth. Don’t believe me? Try to remain completely still during the opening credits--perfectly shot and cut to “Stayin’ Alive”--and see what happens.

THE VIDEO

The 1.85:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 50GB disc--will quite likely floor anyone who’s only seen the movie on television or standard-def disc (in other words, pretty much everyone).

I was stunned right off the bat; the deep red of Travolta’s shirt virtually pops off the screen, contrasted wonderfully with his black jacket. The softness you expect from a movie from this era is on display, but it in no way robs the visuals of depth or clarity.

Colors don’t bleed or bloom unnaturally; even the cubes in the club’s lighted dance floor hold firm.  Blacks are surprisingly strong, and grain has a completely natural appearance. The movie easily could have looked horrible, but it’s hard to imagine it looking any better than it does here.   

THE AUDIO

The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio is also very impressive. There’s as much music as there is dialogue, and the former sounds very, very good. The surrounds primarily help open up the music, although some crowd noise and discrete effects are also channeled in the club scenes and exteriors.

Dialogue has an uneven quality, but the original elements are to be blamed for this; production conditions and other issues (including problems with music clearances) forced the filmmakers to loop some of the dialogue, and at times it really sticks out. The low end has a healthy presence in the music, although it tends to disappear elsewhere.

French Dolby Digital 5.1 and Spanish mono tracks are also included. English, English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

All of the extras here, many of which are culled from 2007’s 30th Anniversary standard-def disc, are presented in high-definition on this Blu-ray Disc.

The commentary by director John Badham makes for a good listen. He touches on the story’s themes, the music, the staging of the dance scenes, casting, and pretty much every other topic you can think of.

Catching the Fever (52 minutes) is a retrospective documentary. Travolta is conspicuous in his absence, but the other major players are on hand to discuss the script, production, music, clothes, and the movie’s legacy. I wish this piece (which you can also view as six topic-specific featurettes) had been more comprehensive and had dug a little deeper, but it does contain some good info.

‘70s Discopedia is a popup trivia track that provides both production factoids and info about the era in which the movie is set.

Three deleted scenes (4 minutes total) are also included, but they’re too brief to really matter. (Even if you’ve never owned the movie on disc before, there’s a chance you’ve already seen these scenes, as they’ve been included in many of the movie’s television airings.)

Fever Challenge! is a rather silly interactive game in which you use your remote to follow a series of color-coded dance moves.

Dance like John Travolta with John Cassese (10 minutes) will teach you to dance just like Travolta does in the movie’s final dance sequence (or maybe not).

Back to Bay Ridge (9 minutes) is a tour of the movie’s Bay Ridge locations (with the notable exception of the disco, which was bulldozed a few years back) hosted by Joseph Cali (who plays Joey in the movie).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Anyone who says you had to have been there in order to enjoy Saturday Night Fever is a fool. Thirty-two years on may be little too soon to determine whether or not a movie is timeless, but this one certainly has a shot.