Saturday Night Fever

(John Badham, US 1977, 118 min., 35mm)

40th Anniversary. The one and only John Travolta is Tony Manero, a Brooklyn paint store clerk who becomes a sex god every Saturday night as he clears the dance floor of the local disco to the tunes of the Bee Gees, Kool and the Gang, and KC and the Sunshine Band.

“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.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, March 7, 1999