Many critics and viewers have sung this film's praises, as relevant and groundbreaking-a musical for someone who doesn't like musicals. It won many Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, but it's hard to see why. The film is awkward, unimaginative, and flat; it preserves many of the defects of the musical it adapts, with many new shortcomings of its own devising.
The 1957 musical was an updating of Romeo and Juliet to the 50s of gangs and zip-guns. Unfortunately, this kind of "updating" soon seems hopelessly dated; the film attempts a further updating to the early 60s, with the same result. That's the amazing thing about Shakespeare's original; as Baz Luhrmann showed, it doesn't need updating, but transcends its time. West Side Story, however, is a period piece.
The musical changes the original story, in an attempt to make it socially relevant-but instead leeches out the power and poignancy. The Montague/ Capulet feud, over some trivial personal slight, long forgotten, is transformed into a racial conflict, a battle between established and recent immigrants; One of Shakespeare's points is that such a personal feud might possibly be healed by guilt over some needless deaths. But a racial conflict isn't going to go away just because Maria accuses both gangs of recklessness. Unfortunately, the play pretends that this kind of simplistic reconciliation can happen.and this passes for realism or relevance? Would anyone find the ending realistic if it were set in Northern Ireland, or in Palestine? Come off it!
Another revealing change: both Romeo and Juliet die, suicides in despair at the thought of life without transcendent love. Maria does not kill herself, but survives to call both Jets and Sharks to reconciliation at the end. In Shakespeare, this call comes from the civil and religious authorities, and the reconciliation comes about only when the feuding leaders finally submit to these authorities. In West Side Story, there are no authorities that anybody could submit to; the parents are nonexistent, the police are figures to be mocked, and Friar Laurence has been transformed into Doc, a cranky old shopkeeper who has no counsel to offer other than "When are you kids going to grow up!" Most of the "updated" dialogue is of this sort-replacing timeless poetry with slangy inanities.
There are many such flaws in the musical (including Bernstein's stylistic indecision; he vacillated between writing sharp-edged jazz and slurpy romantic ballads, but at least most of the music is fairly interesting), but the film outdoes them all in its quest to be cinematic and realistic. So we are treated to a dozen or so well-groomed dancers leaping and prancing through Hollywood-realistic city-street sets. Realism? how long would these guys last if they tried dancing like this through the real West Side? They don't look realistic at all, just silly.
The most effective scenes are those that are most like a filmed stage-play, with a fairly static camera and the dancers confined to a well-defined set. "America" is done on a rooftop, "Officer Krupke" is set on a single front stoop, and the Dance at the Gym [aka the Capulet's Ball] is genuinely exciting. Presumably both of these were directly inspired by the original choreography; at any rate they are the least cinematic, and the most successful.
The much-touted cinematic effects look cheap and desperately unimaginative. No one could think of anything more interesting to do during the Overture than cycle the stylized graphic of Manhattan through various primary colours, changing every minute or so, for no apparent reason? The opening music accompanies overhead shots of many different locations in New York (including Yankee Stadium, and the UN building); why? Tony sings "Something's Coming" in front of a shoddy back-projection of streets, unmotivated by anything in the song, and looks like he's riding through a Tunnel of Love. The haloing of Tony and Maria when they first meet at the dance might have been a novel effect in the 1930s, but in 1961 it looks like something out of a student effort.
Of course, any time Tony or Maria are on the screen a discerning viewer wants to run and hide anyway. Neither Richard Beymer nor Natalie Wood has the slightest degree of charisma, neither can sing (their songs had to be dubbed, with no attempt made to match the vocal timbres, or even to make it look like they were really singing), neither can dance (ensembles dance around them, while they hardly move), Wood's attempt to affect a Puerto Rican accent is embarrassing to say the least. So this timeless love story has a great big zero at its heart: two central characters about whom no one really gives a hoot, and who lack any ability to grab your attention. (The second leads are much better, esp. George Chakiris, not a Latino by the way, as Bernardo, aka Tybalt, the leader of the Puerto Ricans.)
What were the producers and casting people thinking? Probably they started believing their own hype, that this was inevitably going to be a great timeless film, and they opted for names rather than talent. Even if they thought the world really needed a film version of this so-so musical, they would have been better off just filming a stage production, with real singers and actors, and dancers dancing where they belonged, on a stage.
This isn't a great film, and it certainly isn't a great film musical. If you want to see one of those, try Singing in the Rain, or Top Hat, or The Band Wagon, or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, or Moulin Rouge.
The 1957 musical was an updating of Romeo and Juliet to the 50s of gangs and zip-guns. Unfortunately, this kind of "updating" soon seems hopelessly dated; the film attempts a further updating to the early 60s, with the same result. That's the amazing thing about Shakespeare's original; as Baz Luhrmann showed, it doesn't need updating, but transcends its time. West Side Story, however, is a period piece.
The musical changes the original story, in an attempt to make it socially relevant-but instead leeches out the power and poignancy. The Montague/ Capulet feud, over some trivial personal slight, long forgotten, is transformed into a racial conflict, a battle between established and recent immigrants; One of Shakespeare's points is that such a personal feud might possibly be healed by guilt over some needless deaths. But a racial conflict isn't going to go away just because Maria accuses both gangs of recklessness. Unfortunately, the play pretends that this kind of simplistic reconciliation can happen.and this passes for realism or relevance? Would anyone find the ending realistic if it were set in Northern Ireland, or in Palestine? Come off it!
Another revealing change: both Romeo and Juliet die, suicides in despair at the thought of life without transcendent love. Maria does not kill herself, but survives to call both Jets and Sharks to reconciliation at the end. In Shakespeare, this call comes from the civil and religious authorities, and the reconciliation comes about only when the feuding leaders finally submit to these authorities. In West Side Story, there are no authorities that anybody could submit to; the parents are nonexistent, the police are figures to be mocked, and Friar Laurence has been transformed into Doc, a cranky old shopkeeper who has no counsel to offer other than "When are you kids going to grow up!" Most of the "updated" dialogue is of this sort-replacing timeless poetry with slangy inanities.
There are many such flaws in the musical (including Bernstein's stylistic indecision; he vacillated between writing sharp-edged jazz and slurpy romantic ballads, but at least most of the music is fairly interesting), but the film outdoes them all in its quest to be cinematic and realistic. So we are treated to a dozen or so well-groomed dancers leaping and prancing through Hollywood-realistic city-street sets. Realism? how long would these guys last if they tried dancing like this through the real West Side? They don't look realistic at all, just silly.
The most effective scenes are those that are most like a filmed stage-play, with a fairly static camera and the dancers confined to a well-defined set. "America" is done on a rooftop, "Officer Krupke" is set on a single front stoop, and the Dance at the Gym [aka the Capulet's Ball] is genuinely exciting. Presumably both of these were directly inspired by the original choreography; at any rate they are the least cinematic, and the most successful.
The much-touted cinematic effects look cheap and desperately unimaginative. No one could think of anything more interesting to do during the Overture than cycle the stylized graphic of Manhattan through various primary colours, changing every minute or so, for no apparent reason? The opening music accompanies overhead shots of many different locations in New York (including Yankee Stadium, and the UN building); why? Tony sings "Something's Coming" in front of a shoddy back-projection of streets, unmotivated by anything in the song, and looks like he's riding through a Tunnel of Love. The haloing of Tony and Maria when they first meet at the dance might have been a novel effect in the 1930s, but in 1961 it looks like something out of a student effort.
Of course, any time Tony or Maria are on the screen a discerning viewer wants to run and hide anyway. Neither Richard Beymer nor Natalie Wood has the slightest degree of charisma, neither can sing (their songs had to be dubbed, with no attempt made to match the vocal timbres, or even to make it look like they were really singing), neither can dance (ensembles dance around them, while they hardly move), Wood's attempt to affect a Puerto Rican accent is embarrassing to say the least. So this timeless love story has a great big zero at its heart: two central characters about whom no one really gives a hoot, and who lack any ability to grab your attention. (The second leads are much better, esp. George Chakiris, not a Latino by the way, as Bernardo, aka Tybalt, the leader of the Puerto Ricans.)
What were the producers and casting people thinking? Probably they started believing their own hype, that this was inevitably going to be a great timeless film, and they opted for names rather than talent. Even if they thought the world really needed a film version of this so-so musical, they would have been better off just filming a stage production, with real singers and actors, and dancers dancing where they belonged, on a stage.
This isn't a great film, and it certainly isn't a great film musical. If you want to see one of those, try Singing in the Rain, or Top Hat, or The Band Wagon, or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, or Moulin Rouge.