In the darkest corner of New York City, the youthful white-skinned gang, the Jets, led by Riff (Russ Tamblyn) are at loggerheads with the youthful Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, led by Bernardo (George Chakiris). To complicate matters, Riff’s best friend Tony (Richard Beymer) has fallen in love with Bernardo’s sister, Maria (Natalie Wood) - and this is a love that is very much forbidden…
Doug says...
I’ve seen West Side Story several times before and never particularly warmed to it. I've always seen it as Romeo and Juliet but without the satisfactory poetic language, and the songs always seemed particularly trite and meaningless to me. As a standalone piece I don’t think I’m ever going to love it, and this is borne testament to by the fact that I watched it about five years ago and live-tweeted my utter disdain the whole way through - that is except for Rita Moreno whose exceptional portrayal of loudmouth (but ultimately vulnerable) Anita has always drawn my praise.
But watching this film in the series as we are, I’ve gained a newfound appreciation and - perhaps more importantly - respect for this piece. It’s stunningly different from what’s come before, and it seems that only by watching it in context does it shake off the dusty feel and show you quite how groundbreaking it was. In fact, it’s such a game-changer that it’s clearly influenced a hell of a lot since. Gigi and the romanticised French world, it is not.
And that’s the thing that most struck me about watching it this time. It’s not the cinematic effects - bright colours and rudimentary special touches (the ballroom where everything goes blurry except for Tony and Maria seeing each other) - it’s actually the gritty reality of the setting. Maria sings and dances about how she feels pretty, while in a glorified sweatshop with a window showing only more built up scaffolding and grey skies outside. The big dancehall where Maria and Tony meet is a dilapidated open space with paint peeling on the walls and just a large dirty wooden floor. Even the flat where Anita and Maria all live seems small and dated - a stained glass door feels dark and claustrophobic.
Nowhere is this more apparent that in (what I would argue is the best song in the whole show) ‘America’. Anita roars about (Rita Moreno proving in one song why she won the Supporting Actress Oscar) and spars with her lover, Maria’s brother, Bernardo about why America is great. The lyrics are sharp and sadly still hold truth. America is wonderful, the song goes, if you are white. But despite Anita’s protestations that their life is better there, the plain fact is that all of these joyous, fiery people are dancing and singing on the roof of their run down apartments, while outside gangs of bored young men are wandering the basketball courts, and running towards trouble.
It’s a cruel and inspired moment that when Anita is being assaulted later on, ‘America’ plays over the top. And the film is filled with these bitter ironies. The young men sing ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’, a comic pastiche of how society treats them, blissfully unaware of how they are actually showing how disillusioned, bored people can end up in trouble - and in jail. It’s even in the now infamous choreography, where they pirouette and spin elegantly, clicking their fingers, ballet moves representing the actual savagery of their actions.
It does feel dated, and at times a little dusty - the Tony and Maria love-story is by far the least interesting thing in it, and Moreno aside, I’d still struggle to say the performances are anything further than good (the ending could be more powerful, I feel, if Natalie Wood had pushed it a little further and really gone for the emotion in the moment). But ultimately this is an influential and groundbreaking film, and watching it now, I really appreciated the clever lines it draws between the worlds we imagine for ourselves, versus the worlds we actually inhabit - and what happens when those two worlds collide.
Highlight
It has to be ‘America’ - a great, rip-roaring scream of a song, with huge passionate statements made about the inherent racism in America, balanced against the hope it can provide.
Lowlight
While Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer do their best as the two leads, their love story never feels as central to the plot as the huge gaping sets and scenery do. This is actually a film about the rough areas of New York and all the people who inhabit them. Romeo and Juliet it isn’t.
Mark
8/10
Paul says...
It’s now been 10 years (or rather, 10 blogging weeks) since we saw the first significant musical to win Best Picture, An American in Paris (we’re just going to pretend that 1929’s The Broadway Melody never happened). The 1951 Gene Kelly-winner was a film of its day. Brimming with colour, dance, silliness and beauty, the emphasis was very much on whimsical escapism and vaudeville-esque variety. A feast for the senses but not for the mind. Flash forward to 1961, and we have West Side Story. It is also brimming with colour, dance, silliness and beauty, but with some pretty heavy social commentary thrown in. We’re 34 years of Oscars ceremonies down the line now, and we’re now in a generation where children born post-World War II are becoming mid-teens and young adults. The youths of the late '50s and early '60s were raised in a rapidly-liberalising world by parents who had seen humanity at its worst. The gap between the young and old had never been wider.
So a musical that incorporates joyous song and dance with the rebellion of a disenfranchised youth, as well as gang warfare and racial tensions must have landed like a meteorite in the cinemas. Not only does West Side Story move the musical forward into more hard-hitting territory through its content, but also through its style. One moment we’re seeing gangs of young men throwing rocks and debris at each other on location in a desolate playground, the next swirling blurry dancers surround the in-focus lovers as their eyes meet across a dance floor. West Side Story takes the anything-is-possible surrealism of the 50’s musicals and injects some downtrodden set pieces, violence, sexual references and near-swear words that are far from attractive.
And really, it’s an astonishing piece of work. Most of the numbers are worth viewing as stand-alone pieces. “America”, “I’m So Pretty”, “Mambo” display choreography that is so intricate that it looks super-human, and super-speedy lyrics that show Stephen Sondheim’s powers of lyricism in their early days. They are a testament to the belief that, sometimes, music and movement are all you need to conjure the most complex and contradictory of emotions in your audience. Unlike Doug, I think the film’s ending is a masterclass in understatement and the power of wordlessness. I’m tearful every time I see it, and I like that the film doesn’t end on a bombastic reprise of the loudest song in the story, but rather a tender, quiet rendition of an earlier ballad, the heart-breaking “Somewhere”.
The film’s imperfections for me are firstly in the opening dance sequence. It is lengthy and it is meant to establish a culture of intimidation between gangs of disenchanted young men. But none of the actors particularly convey that knuckle-headed machismo needed to suggest hardened, semi-abused working class boys. I’m not quite sure why this is, but I think it’s something to do with their shiny white teeth, perfect hair, well-fitted clothes and pirouettes that would make Darcy Bussell head back to the rehearsal studio. Songs such as “Gee, Officer Krupke” give us far more insight into these characters than the Prologue, which really causes the film to stall a few times before it finally gets going.
Secondly, the two leads are vastly overshadowed by the supporters. This is reflected in the fact that neither Richard Beymer nor Natalie Wood were nominated for acting Oscars, while George Chakiris and the incomparable Rita Moreno both won the supporting trophies. In fact, Beymer is generally criticised for his saccharine performance, and he would later admit that it was not how he wanted to play the role.
But for all its faults, West Side Story is a necessary watch for anyone. It’s a landmark musical, one of the first to deal with pertinent social issues, one that has rarely been surpassed in terms of energy, passion and power, and it is, quite frankly, a work of art.
Highlight
If you’re not driven to tears by “Somewhere” then you have a heart of stone and you probably need to be exorcised.
Lowlight
The opening dance sequence doesn’t quite do what it set out to achieve, but if you like fabulous dancing then you may end up prancing around your living room.
Mark
9/10
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