Not Coming to a Theater Near You Two-Thousand Twelve In Review

Saturday Night
Fever

John Badham
USA, 1977

Saturday Night Fever

by Michael Nordine

U

Until September of last year I had what turned out to be a false memory of watching Saturday Night Fever one restless night on TV. I was 9 or 10 years old, half awake, and somewhat distressed by what I recall as a seemingly endless credits sequence in which John Travolta walks down a sidewalk to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive.” It was this oddly stressful recollection that most accounts for my having avoided the film for so long. The scene described above doesn't actually take place, but its evocation of New York City gives such a vivid sense of what the city was actually like in the late ’70s that the actual movie is now seared into my memory in a far more pleasing way. I don't expect to put it on the next time I can’t fall asleep, but neither will I change the channel if it’s already on.


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