There’s no question in my mind that West Side Story deserves its place high on the list of the greatest film musicals of all time, both the 1961 version and the 60th anniversary re-adaptation. Both films are based on the stage musical conceived by the American choreographer and dancer, Jerome Robbins (who shares a co-directing credit on the 1961 version with Robert Wise), with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Steven Sondheim and book by Arthur Laurents. That’s an awful lot of great American musical and stage talent, which lends West Side Story a pedigree further cemented by its tale of “star-crossed lovers” that borrows heavily from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; at the same time, West Side Story is a very American tale, the story of successive waves of immigrants and their children caught up on a conflict for the territory of the New World and the violence that follows from it. And yet, at its heart is a story of overcoming ethnic or territorial differences in the name of an overwhelming and irrational love.
Briefly, West Side Story is about two gangs: the Jets, mostly made up of white immigrants from Poland and Italy, and the Sharks, the newer group from the US territory of Puerto Rico. Each stakes a claim to a few blocks in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the late 1950s, a claim for a territory that is increasingly shrinking and gentrifying (something made explicit in the opening of Steven Spielberg’s 2021 version as the Jets emerge from the rubble of a destroyed block being cleared for the new Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a heavy-handed but self-aware nod to the gentrifying role that art often plays in the ongoing saga of the American progress). As the gangs scramble for the scraps of post-war society, enter Tony, an erstwhile Jet (who abandoned his more ethnic sounding “Anton” for the tougher American nickname) and Maria, a new arrival from Puerto Rico, whose brother Bernardo leads the Sharks. The pair fall in love at a local dance in the school gym, and, well, the rest is a tale as old as time, soaked in blood and misunderstanding.
But why do these films deserve to be mentioned as some of the greatest and most meaningful musicals ever, besides their pedigree and iconic story? Both film versions of West Side Story are masterfully told and presented. Jerome Robbins’ dance choreography in the 1961 film version is some of the best on film, telling the story through movement and a balletic grace. For instance, take the opening sequence as the Jets dance through their territory, open arms showing their dominance and the space they are occupying; people sometimes mock the pirouettes and obvious artifice of it, as it ripe for parody; but West Side Story stands out in being a rare contemporaneously set (at least in 1961) integrated musical (meaning songs are integrated into the story and characters burst into song to progress the plot or share their emotional state) that still embraces the expressionism of dance and other modes of art that have fallen out of fashion, avoiding the literalism that has in part contributed to the decline of the musical genre in cinema.
Even the 2021 version, which maintains some of Robbins’ choreography but equally uses Spielberg and DP Janusz Kaminski’s roving camera and long-takes to emphasize the talent on display, as Ansel Elgort and Ariana DeBose, among the other cast members, are very talented dancers and singers. While Spielberg’s version may not have the same expressionism and classicism of Wise’s and Robbins’ film, one area it excels in is having actors who can sing and dance without being dubbed or subbed in. Natalie Wood’s Maria is iconic, as her large eyes show her yearning for Tony as well as any in cinema, but she was dubbed over famously by singer Marnie Nixon. Rachel Zegler, in her film debut, shows an impressive ability to sing, as does the rest of the cast.
West Side Story manages to take a timeless tale of love-at-first-sight and set it against the backdrop of the American dream in a way that the artistry is in service of expressing very real human experiences. While some may dismiss the value of such reckless love, it nonetheless is something people have felt across the centuries, and West Side Story points not only to the damage it can cause, but the way that it can transcend cultural and social barriers. Arguably the spiritual center of the film is the song, “One Hand, One Heart,” a symbolic marriage between Tony and Maria where they express their intention to wed, even if it’s impossible in the context of their world. Spielberg’s version deepens this reading, staging their duet in the Met Cloisters, a church in Washington Heights, in front of a stained-glass window.
As I’ve mentioned, West Side Story is the story of an America born of immigrants and the communities formed out of that process, and the conflicts brought over as well— remember that all the original creators, Robbins, Bernstein, Sondheim, and Laurents, were the children of Jewish immigrants to America, and the experiences in the film, and recounted in the famous song, “America,” are as much an expression of the difference between life in Eastern European shtetl and New York, as they are of Puerto Rico. The film reconciles this in the number, “Somewhere,” recalling the yearning for a “a place for us”, whether it’s the star-crossed lovers or people attempting to make a new life in a new home.
The influence of West Side Story is immense, evident not only in Spielberg’s professed “obsession” with the musical that led him to remake it, but across American culture. The dancing street toughs in Martin Scorsese’s music video for Michael Jackson’s “Bad” echo the Jets at the start of the film, while famed Soviet-American dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov claimed that the 1961 film was a massive influence on him (and his work with Jerome Robbins). It looms large over the musical genre for its artistry, its accessibility, and its timeless story. To me, it is not only one of the great American film musicals, but films, full stop.
— Anders Bergstrom (2022); 3Brothers Film
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