ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THE NEWS had been circulating for years: Steven Spielberg was contemplating a remake of West Side Story. At points it seemed close to happening then, as with many extravagant rumors, it receded. Finally, in 2018, there was official word. Spielberg would be directing a new Twentieth Century Fox production of West Side Story, with prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner writing the screenplay and the eminent conductor Gustavo Dudamel leading the musical forces. Very shortly after that, it began to seem like 1960 all over again: wild casting rumors, all manner of speculation, thousands of potential Jets and Sharks being considered and tested. Eventually, news began to trickle out about the cast. Ansel Elgort would be Tony, with Mike Faist as Riff, Ariana DeBose as Anita, and David Alvarez as Bernardo. Just as it had in 1960, the announcement for Maria came last. Seventeen-year-old Rachel Zegler, born in New Jersey to a Polish father and Colombian mother, had already attracted attention on Twitter when her performance of “Shallow,” the Lady Gaga song from A Star Is Born (2018), hit over seven million views.
Also in the cast announcements was the most specific possible link to the original. Rita Moreno would serve as an executive producer and play a new variant of an old role: Doc, the kindly candy-store owner, was now Moreno’s Valentina, Doc’s widow. The production would be set in the show’s original time period, with shooting locations selected in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. Filming began in the summer of 2019, with a release date set for December of 2020. This heady news was greeted with reactions spanning as wide a spectrum as one might expect—excitement, suspicion, exasperation, and a great deal of curiosity. Why Spielberg, why now, why a remake of an acknowledged classic?
Why, indeed. There are countless answers, since the notion of remaking a film has been an imperative since the dawn of movies. Before television and home video, most films finished their initial runs and were then effectively dead. A few big movies—Gone With the Wind, Disney features, King Kong (1933)—might be brought back, and some others, if they were lucky, could get a brief revival. Remakes, then, could be a way of bringing back a favorite story while keeping the studio assembly line humming, be it with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Les Misérables, or Show Boat. The success rate varied widely. MGM scored hugely with a new Ben-Hur and not happily with the second Mutiny on the Bounty. Alfred Hitchcock fared well when he remade The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), as did Cecil B. DeMille with The Ten Commandments (1956), and producer Ross Hunter’s updated versions of Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Imitation of Life (1959) were massive successes. The Blue Angel (1959), Stagecoach (1966), and Psycho (1998) were prominent among those which might have been better left unmade, while others were done, fortunately, only as movies for television.
The most negligible remake of all was, indeed, a musical: a 1999 animated redo of The King and I to which Entertainment Weekly gave a grade of “F” and noted, “In this kingdom, no one whistles a happy tune.” In a vastly different category was one of the lesser-known films of the iconoclastic cult director Abel Ferrara, China Girl (1987) was, in a way, a warm-up for the Spielberg remake. As per the Ferrara norm, it was stylish, unsettling, and featured a good deal of violence. The rival forces this time were Little Italy and Chinatown, with numerous gangs and a hero named Tony. Essentially, it was an updated, vernacular Romeo and Juliet, yet the references to West Side Story were both too numerous and too deliberate to overlook, even without Bernstein’s music.
In the twenty-first century, with the word “franchise” in common cinematic usage, remakes were folded into the mix of continuations, prequels, and spin-offs. Superhero movies, with their ever-more-sophisticated digital effects and action sequences, could be recycled to deliver the same plotlines with new thrills and maximum amounts of shock and awe. Not dissimilarly, the Walt Disney Company initiated a parade of mega-costly new versions of some of its most successful animated features: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, Aladdin, The Lion King, and more. The rationale with these and with many twenty-first-century remakes, as a critic observed, “isn’t meant to replace or outdo… but rather to multiply revenue streams and use a beloved property to show off some new tricks.”
This was the movie world that, in 2018, received the news that one of the most successful directors of all time was going to give the world his own take on West Side Story. Spielberg himself had been responsible for a popular remake when, in 2005, he directed War of the Worlds, originally filmed in 1953. But a science-fiction epic is a long distance away from a musical drama, especially one with passionate adherents. Spielberg had only fleeting contact with musical staging, including some raucous dancing in 1941 (1979) and, at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), an amusing “Anything Goes” sung in Mandarin. Otherwise, his films showed as little interest in musical matters as those directed by Robert Wise in the 1940s and ’50s. So how might West Side Story fit into this? With success, reputation, and sheer clout beyond the most fanciful dreams of nearly all his peers, Spielberg had long been able to choose exactly the properties he wished to do, be they as serious as Schindler’s List (1993) or as thrill-intensive as Jurassic Park (1993). And, as it turned out, the 1961 original was reported to be one of the few musicals for which Spielberg, movie buff that he was, nursed a good deal of affection.
As seen through an objective lens, there were strong cases to be made both for and against a remake. On the “anti-remake” side, there was both the quality of the first film and the dedication with which it had been made. Far from seeking to crank out another movie-made-from-a-show, the filmmakers sought to preserve the show’s integrity by finding a separate-but-equal equivalence. While not making a slavish copy, they stayed unusually close to the source, in some ways strengthening the material. Some of the purely cinematic aspects—the aerial montage, the dynamism of the editing, even the subtle use of special effects—were less movie tricks than genuine enhancements. There is also the matter of the Jerome Robbins choreography which, no matter how imitated, borrowed from, and stolen over the decades, remains sublime. Nor, for that matter, could anyone or anything replicate the fierce commitment and sheer presence of those dancers and actors from whom Robbins demanded so much and to whom he gave a kind of immortality.
Other issues are more equivocal. Obviously, perspectives have changed since West Side Story was new, and “the way things were done” in 1960 has since acquired a much different complexion. As with the Broadway original, the film followed the traditions and customs of its time by casting a number of non-Hispanic actors as Puerto Ricans. This, in turn, was compounded by some perceived stereotypes—the Latina spitfire, the macho, crime-prone Latino—and, in the film, makeup and accents that are clearly a product of 1960, not the twenty-first century. (“It was like putting mud on my face,” Rita Moreno commented in 2017.) The effects of all this can for some undercut a part of the film’s conviction and message. That message, in 1961, had been one of hope: some believed that it might shed fresh light on juvenile delinquency, open dialogue between racially divided groups, and see a path to greater harmony between new immigrants and longtime residents. Six decades later, these problems all persist, and if awareness has been heightened for many, some wounds of division have become even more raw. Of course, there’s only so much a film can do, however sincere or false its conventions seem.
There are also some more “movie” factors within the original that may not, to some, seem ideal, such as the vaguely cleaned-up sheen that can betray the site of filming as a Hollywood soundstage. Goodness knows, West Side Story is far from the most objectionable in this regard. Still, in spite of the care and expense, there are moments that can seem phony. For some, there is also the question of the songs, both in the occasional incongruity of the dubbed voices and in the aural perspectives that can shift jarringly between speech and singing, between Natalie and Marni. As for the casting: there are aspects of that which will always be in dispute.
The issues connected with culture and ethnicity are especially sensitive and, if anything, some of the response to the Puerto Rican devastation after Hurricane Maria in 2017 made the divisions appear even sharper. Thus it was, in December of 2018, that Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner traveled to San Juan to have a public discussion about West Side Story on the campus of the University of Puerto Rico. With a group of professors, students, and other invited guests in attendance, the conversation stayed off the subject of “representation” for most of its duration. Finally, when one professor brought up what was later termed “the elephant in the room,” the discussion began to center around the fact that for many in Puerto Rico, West Side Story does not have quite the regard it does on the mainland. In particular, the song “America” has been viewed as misleading in its implication that most Puerto Ricans emigrate because they despise their homeland. (The fact that Stephen Sondheim changed the lyrics for the film has not prevented the objections from persisting.) Spielberg and Kushner replied to these points by offering assurance that every kind of cultural sensitivity would be applied in making the film, particularly in terms of casting and authentic accents and costuming. If the filmmakers and educators were not always communicating fully with each other, it was a conversation that never would have occurred fifty-eight years earlier, when the first movie was being planned and cast.
While Puerto Rico’s general opinion of West Side Story appears to be essentially the same now as when the show and movie first opened, it can also be noted that the world viewing Spielberg’s West Side Story is vastly different from the one that saw the original. Witness, to begin with, the countless changes from then to now in the sheer act of going to the movies. Road-show films are as extinct as the pterodactyl, and filmmakers are under greater pressure than ever before to come up with work whose upfront impact can make an immediate profit. Observe, also, the basic sets of expectations that greeted the first film versus those that inform the remake. In 1961, West Side Story was, for all but those who had seen the show, an unknown quantity. Perhaps they knew the music, but there were many millions of people who went to see it and were all but unprepared. What did those audiences feel? The film was so immediate and audacious that its impact was probably like that legendary early movie screening when the spectators in the first rows leaped from their seats to avoid being run down by the train they saw barreling toward the camera. With the poetry and tragedy of the love story, the emotional and physical violence of the conflict, and the constant momentum of the music and dance, this was new, all new.
An audience seeing West Side Story in 2020 is carrying far different baggage, both going to the movie theater and then departing it. For one thing, the basic material is far more familiar than it was when the first film opened; everyone, essentially, knows West Side Story now. And, among the millions who know and love the original film, apprehension and suspicion about a new version are likely. There’s also the fact that a work as consequential and influential as this casts an awfully long shadow. West Side Story, the 1961 film, has made an indelible imprint—and how much can be done to shake all that up? Or, even less likely, eclipse it? In an interview he gave before his trip to Puerto Rico, Tony Kushner stressed that his script for the new film will follow the original show far more than the movie—although, in actuality, those two entities had not been very far apart. Careful to not criticize the original film, which he termed a “masterpiece,” Kushner added that the new version is intended not to replace its predecessor but “to be a new interpretation.… There are many different versions possible of a great work of art like West Side Story, and we are doing our own version.”
Kushner’s statements are certainly accurate, and they make an important point. Regardless of merit or quality, a film can be remade, but it cannot be replaced. If comparisons are unavoidable, the basic 1961 film does not change. Unlike stage productions, which are essentially ephemeral, a film is, in a particular way, everlasting. While perceptions and opinions may shift and alter, the basic work will remain. In this case, the work has always been, and will always be, of very high quality indeed. This was true on Broadway in 1957, remained so on film in 1961, and forever after.
As to the Spielberg film, one of the members of the original cast offered an elegant bit of torch-passing. Carole D’Andrea, who created the role of Velma on Broadway and reprised it in the film, has said, “It is so wonderful they are giving a new generation a chance to make and experience this beautiful classic.”
One further certainty remains. West Side Story, as codirected by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, will continue to thrill, delight, and even sometimes provoke its audiences. Through all that work and conflict back in 1960 and 1961—the injuries, delays, headaches, and firings—somehow, it happened. It triumphed when it was new, and it still does. On screens big and small, Maria and Tony and the Jets and the Sharks will remain vivid, immediate, and unforgettable. They will not change. Nor will they be replaced.