OVP: Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Film: Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Stars: John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller, Joseph Cali, Paul Pape, Donna Pescow
Director: John Badham
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actor-John Travolta)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Every week on the blog we pick a different theme for the reviews we highlight during the week, typically with an Oscar slant, and as you can see by this picture only receiving one Oscar nomination, this is a week devoted to Best Actor (in a lovely coincidence, we'll also be doing our 2005 Official OVP Best Actor ballot this week).  John Travolta in 1977 became one of the youngest men ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar at the age of only 23.  Travolta's career took a lot of turns, being super hot for a few years, then falling completely apart before the comeback of Pulp Fiction, and then another few years of movie stardom before it would once again subside (he's in another ebb right now but he's a well-liked comeback king, so I suspect he'll eventually make it back).  Today we'll take a look at that first nomination, in a film that changed the movie & music of the 1970's, Saturday Night Fever.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Tony Manero (Travolta), a young man who works a thankless job at a local hardware store and lives with his parents.  Manero, though, is a gifted dancer and escapes from the doldrums of his life by performing nightly at a disco club, picking up women & earning admiration from onlookers.  Tony is set to compete in an upcoming dance competition with Annette (Pescow), but dumps her to dance with Stephanie (Gorney), a dancer who is considerably better than Annette.  Stephanie & Tony initially don't start out romantically involved, but eventually start to elevate their relationship.  Meanwhile, Tony and his friends continue to engage in more reckless behavior, picking fights with local gangs and doing dangerous stunts on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, until at one point one of the friends, despondent over consistently being mocked by his buddies & his pregnant girlfriend, accidentally kills himself while performing one of the stunts.  This results in Tony trying to salvage his (by then fractured) relationship with Stephanie, and perhaps strive for a different life for himself.

If you know anything about Saturday Night Fever, you know the soundtrack and what Travolta looks like doing a disco move in his skin-tight white suit.  It's one of the most iconic images of the 1970's, and over 40 years later, has the kind of pop culture cliche where everyone knows what you're referencing if you stick one arm in the air in a confident strut.  This isn't just a throwaway aspect of the film-Travolta's dancing is mesmerizing, and the songs are terrific.  Instant classics like "Stayin' Alive," "Night Fever," and "How Deep is Your Love" are played throughout the movie with flare, and it's criminal that forgettable music from The Rescuers and The Slipper and the Rose somehow bested such gigantic hits, and ones used brilliantly in the movie (personally, I'd struggle to not fill all five of the Best Song slots with numbers from Saturday Night Fever).

That said, Saturday Night Fever is a solid movie, but way more serious than I expected.  Despite its flashy outfits & rebel youth spirit, this is a serious drama, one with few moments of extended comedy.  Travolta is excellent as Tony Manero-you don't get a nomination that young, especially the only nomination for the film, without being really good, and he brings a sense of youthful entitlement to a troubled, but under-the-surface decent young man.  The scenes where he stays silent, his moments of tortured gallantry (when he wishes his life would be less complicated), are really fine acting, and give you a sense as to why Travolta would be such a versatile presence in the movies in the decades that follow.  One has to wonder how different her career had been if Oscar had also noticed Donna Pescow giving a riveting performance as the forgotten Annette in the film.  She plays the young woman, clearly over-her-head but willing to put herself in increasingly dangerous circumstances (with tragic consequences) because she's hopelessly in love with Tony, and willing to change anything about herself to be with him.  Travolta became a superstar, Pescow became a Disney Channel mom-thus is occasionally the curse of being a near-miss with Oscar.