WEST SIDE STORY

MIRISCH CORPORATION/UNITED ARTISTS, 1961 | COLOR (TECHNICOLOR)/SUPER PANAVISION 70, 152 MINUTES

DIRECTORS: ROBERT WISE AND JEROME ROBBINS PRODUCER: ROBERT WISE SCREENPLAY: ERNEST LEHMAN, BASED ON THE MUSICAL PLAY BY ARTHUR LAURENTS SONGS: LEONARD BERNSTEIN (MUSIC) AND STEPHEN SONDHEIM (LYRICS) CHOREOGRAPHER: JEROME ROBBINS STARRING: NATALIE WOOD (MARIA), RICHARD BEYMER (TONY), RUSS TAMBLYN (RIFF), RITA MORENO (ANITA), GEORGE CHAKIRIS (BERNARDO), SIMON OAKLAND (SCHRANK), NED GLASS (DOC), WILLIAM BRAMLEY (KRUPKE), TUCKER SMITH (ICE), TONY MORDENTE (ACTION)

A boy and a girl meet and fall in love against a background of prejudice and gang violence.

Among the many Broadway shows that have also been part of the film equation, West Side Story is a special, stand-apart case. In its urgent subject matter and history-making dance, in its updating of Romeo and Juliet and its gloriously varied score by Leonard Bernstein, the show was both a milestone and, for filmmakers, a challenge. To say that it was successfully transferred to the screen is an understatement: this was an “event” in a way few movie musicals had ever been. Even apart from its ten Academy Awards, it remains, for many, a touchstone of the musical form, one of the times the movies really got it right.

From its first seconds, West Side Story is electrifyingly unlike other musicals and other movies. After Bernstein’s rich overture, there is an aerial panorama of Manhattan, with a series of overhead shots moving in, finally, to a basketball court on a playground. With finger-snapping and some jazzy Bernstein sounds, the action starts with a group of Anglo gang members, asserting their ownership in joyful dance moves. Then they meet the enemy: members of a rival gang, this one Puerto Rican. They skirmish and, until the police arrive, the entire story is told solely through music and dance. Plus, wondrously, it has been filmed not on soundstages but in the New York City slums where, everything being equal, it would actually be occurring.

Most of this opening, and many of the other best parts, were the work of Jerome Robbins. The driven and demanding genius of a choreographer had directed the show on Broadway and here staged the dances and shared the director’s chair with Hollywood pro Robert Wise. The virtues of Robbins’s meticulous take-after-take approach are self-evident; unfortunately, such work was so expensive that the original budget was entirely spent by the time the company moved from the New York locations back to Hollywood. Blaming Robbins for the overrun, the producers promptly fired him. He had already worked out the staging for the remaining musical numbers, which Wise finished on his own. The two men would eventually be awarded Oscars for their directing, while Robbins won a second, special statuette for his choreography. Impressed by neither the film industry nor the Academy Awards, he kept both trophies in his basement.

Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Natalie Wood

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