No, Tony. You can’t fuck the future. The future fucks you.

With electric energy, drive and humor, John Travolta’s star-making performance, as Bay Ridge, Brooklyn’s disco prince, Tony Manero, recalls great American actors of 1930s cinema. He’s Paul Muni and James Cagney reincarnated, with something all his own. Saturday Night Fever, remembered for its hit Bee Gees songs, has in common with Warner Brothers movies of the 1930s a strong, realistic evocation of urban working-class life, setting its protagonist adrift once he realizes he can’t achieve his dreams in the confines of the neighborhood where he was born.

Badham’s film is crass and ballsy, with no time for sentiment in its celebration of minor victories. Travolta’s family is shown as mean, small-minded, and as unconcerned with his future as he is concerned with his hair. In one scene at the 2001 Odyssey nightclub, a young Fran Drescher proves she can hold her own with Travolta on the dance floor just by standing there chewing gum. – A.S. Hamrah