West Side Story (Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins, 1961) Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris
Musical film based on the 1957 Leonard Bernstein stage musical with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
The highest grossing film of 1961, and regarded as one of the greatest musical films ever made.
Remade by Steven Spielberg in 2021.
Pauline Kael:
West Side Story begins with a blast of stereophonic music that had me clutching my head. Is the audience so impressed by science and technique, and by the highly advertised new developments that they accept this jolting series of distorted sounds gratefully—on the assumption, perhaps, that because it’s so unlike ordinary sound, it must be better? Everything about West Side Story is supposed to stun you with its newness, its size, the wonders of its photography, editing, choreography, music. It’s nothing so simple as a musical, it’s a piece of cinematic technology. Pauline Kael, Film Quarterly, 1962.
Guest writer Diane Oldman:
Having been brought up on somewhat saccharine movie musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun, Oklahoma, Carousel, etc., I was quite unprepared for my 1962 musical outing.
West Side Story - Modern Shakespeare, modern ballet, modern opera - this one
had it all. I think I saw the movie about seven times and now have a copy of it on DVD.
Jerome Robbins, the choreographer, was greatly challenged by Leonard Bernstein's musical score. Dancers are accustomed to 4, 6, 8 counts but Bernstein was all over the place. One dancer declared 'then along comes Leonard Bernstein with his 5/4 time, his 6/8 time, his 25/6 time: it was crazy; it was very difficult to dance to that kind of music, because it doesn't make dancer sense.' Some dancers suffered injury, some collapsed through exhaustion as Robbins would have gang members scaling high fences, bare-handed, and jumping down to a playground, all in time.
The lead roles did not do their own vocals. Richard Beymer's voice was dubbed by Jimmy Bryant and Natalie Woods' 'Maria' was sung by Marni Nixon (who also did the vocals for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and for Deborah Kerr in The King and I). And it was probably West Side Story that started the 27-year-old Stephen Sondheim on his road to fame. The movie won ten Oscars.
Schober, Adrian 2021, Review of West Side Story Redux: West Side Story: The Jets, the Sharks, and the Making of a Classic, by John Barrios, Senses of Cinema, 99, July.
IMDb page.
Wikipedia page.
Garry Gillard | reviews | New: 1 February, 2022 | Now: 10 February, 2022