Saturday Night Fever DVD Paramount Home Video Grease DVD Warner Video   Reviewed by Tony Buchsbaum	I've always found it interesting that the quintessential film about the 1950s was made in the 70s, and the quintessential film about the 1970s was also made in the 70s. I've also found it interesting -- even intriguing -- that both films were centered on powerful characters played by John Travolta. Both of Travolta's characters are members of gangs. They're both trying to find their way in trying times, when conflicting styles and politics and music and clothing and just about everything were crashing. They're both trying to figure out just who the hell they are -- and what the hell they'll be. Both movies are musicals. Both are composed of a string of indelible moments. And both are newly-available on DVD. Saturday Night Fever brings the 1970s alive like no other film ever will or could. And Travolta's Tony Manero isn't quite everyman, but is certainly every-dancing-man. In a world of nightclubs, drugs, freewheeling backseat sex and the many mores of Italian family life in New York City, Tony struggles to find a road to the future. And right now, that road is lit by the colorful, pulsating lights of his neighborhood dance club, where he's a star and his friends all bask in his limelight. For Tony, dancing is everything. It's his ticket into fame -- even if it's only local fame -- as well as friendships, sex, and fun. He's a kid with a crummy hardware store job, a stressful life at home (where he's the put-upon middle child) and no one to love. He's got that famous Farrah Fawcett-Majors poster on his wall and, as he adorns himself with his polyester shirts and tight pants and gold chains, he adores her in all her toothy, tank-topped glory. But even with all this, Tony knows there must be more out there, even if he can't identify it. In a way, he's like his older brother, who's just decided to hang up his collar -- unadorning himself, as it were -- and leave the priesthood. He, too, knows there's something more out there, even if he can't identify it. The brothers would be the same, except juxtaposing them at opposite ends of things makes for more interesting drama. While Tony is running to something he can't name, Frank is running from everything he can. Tony's angel is Stephanie, the girl he wants to dance with. Played by Karen Lynn Gorney, Stephanie's heavy accent and heavier insistence that they not sleep together is everything needed to get Tony hooked. She's everything he wants and can't have. In an effort to appear more intellectual than he is -- for her, New York is a game in which the smartest player wins -- Stephanie teases him, taunts his sexuality and even mocks his ability to dance. But he meets her every challenge and, when life slaps her up a bit, he's there for her, all soulful eyes and sincerity run amuck. As much as Saturday Night Fever is about Tony's search for self, it's also about Tony's gang of friends, a bunch of guys caught between boyhood and manhood. On their nights out together, they flit between dancing on the lighted floor and dancing on the girders of a bridge. The darkness of the former brings mystery and the promise of joy; the darkness of the latter brings danger, daring and eventually death. Those nights on the bridge are a cold contrast to the warmth of the dance club, but no night is as icy as the one when one of them -- the one who's gotten his girl pregnant -- falls to his death in the river below. Real life bashes its way into his world and then it bashes its way into Tony's -- and changes them all. In the late 70s, everything was still possible. The world, for all its faults, was still a good, fun -- even funny -- place. Nixon was gone, replaced by Ford. Though there was war, there was also rampant innocence. There were drugs, sure, but nothing was too dangerous yet. There was still a certain sexual freedom; AIDS was an undreamed nightmare. And a good polyester outfit was all you needed to make your dreams come true. This is the milieu of Saturday Night Fever. Danger. Fun and games with little consequence. Broken faith in one area, renewed faith in another. Even its music, most of which was provided by the Bee Gees, celebrated life lessons with a soft edge. Reality, sand-papered to pop smoothness. The 1980s, with all their excess and broken promises and over-inflated balloons, was still a ways away. Saturday Night Fever celebrates the period just before, when, even if you couldn't define your dream, you knew there was one out there with your name on it, waiting for you. If Saturday Night Fever was a dark, sometimes bleak, look at the one guy's self-discovery, Grease is a bright, sometimes saccharine look at more or less the same thing. It arrived a year later, in 1978, filled almost to bursting with an innocence that was far removed from and, at the same time, closer to home. I read somewhere that decades don't actually start when the calendar says they do; they start a little later, in the second or third year in. If that's true, then the 80s were still four or five years away, and Grease was a whole other world. If the key moments of Saturday Night Fever happen on the dance floor, as Tony electrifies the screen as well as everyone watching him, Grease, as directed by first-timer Randal Kleiser and starring a fresh-from-Tony John Travolta, has moments at every turn, moments that provide the movie its focus, forward motion and nostalgic bent. There's the moment when hero Danny Zuko's T-birds are singing their half of "Summer Nights," walking up and down the bleachers in unison, the camera swooping before them. The choreography of adolescence. There's the moment when Stockard Channing, indelible as Rizzo, impersonates Sandy, played by Olivia Newton-John, at a Pink Lady sleepover. The tramp-turned-Sandra-Dee. And the one when, during "Greased Lightning," Danny pulls the front curl of his hair down over his forehead, eyes slightly crossed to see it all the better. Getting the curl just right was all that mattered at that moment -- and in a way, it's all that matters, period. And the one when Danny is stranded at the drive-in, the lights of the projector lighting the night mist. And the one when everyone gathers at the gym for the big danceathon. (Yeah, this is a scene, but it's also quite a moment, marriage of Dick Clark-style memory, prom-style dresses, and 50's style music and dancing. Just pay attention to the way the dancing is played to symbolize the film's plot. Marvel at the playful interaction of the emcee and Dinah Manoff, playing all pouty innocence. Watch how Danny and Sandy let all their respective masks fly away as they dance. And watch the energy of the scene shift as the trashy Cha Cha DiGrigorio moves in on Sandy's territory, waving her skirts around in a not-so-subtle effort to drum up a little post-dance backseat action fo her own. It's perfect.) And the legendary one at the end when Sandy-of-the-white-dress-and-demure-hair transforms into Sandy-of-the-black-tights-and-big-hair, becoming everything Danny thought he wanted. Her hair was teased, but she held a promise of a new set of realities to come. He got thrills -- and we all got thrills. The villainy of Rizzo. The dumb antics of all the T-birds. The knowing manipulations of the Pink Ladies. The politics of high school. The high school administrators played by the likes of Eve Arden, Sid Caesar and Dody Goodman. And its never-ending soundtrack of 50s music. With all this going for it, Grease could hardly become anything other than what it is today: a classic for the ages and a love letter to a time when the biggest problem one could have was a zit in the wrong spot on the worst night. You gotta love it. Grease and Saturday Night Fever have both received the full DVD treatment, with commentaries, making-of documentaries and more. Grease even comes with a songbook -- as if we all don't know the words to every song by heart, anyway. Taken together, these films are an eye-opening look at all the reasons there ever was a zeitgeist that surrounded John Travolta. They're a fade-resistent snapshot of one of the kinds of movies we flocked to in the late 70s. And finally -- and most importantly -- they're a time capsule of a period in our own lives when the most important thing was figuring out who and what and why we were...and not wondering if we'd actually make it back from vacation alive. | November 2002   Tony Buchsbaum is the author of Total Eclipse. At night he works on another novel and a screenplay. Days, he writes advertising copy in Lawrenceville, NJ, where he lives with his wife and sons.	Both of Travolta's characters are members of gangs. They're both trying to find their way in trying times, when conflicting styles and politics and music and clothing and just about everything were crashing. They're both trying to figure out just who the hell they are -- and what the hell they'll be.