"West Side Story" (1961) – Classic Movie Review

Mm-Hmm! “Maria! How many times can I sing about Maria”! Way too damn much! That’s how much!
What’s going on guys? I’m Tyler and
to continue my brand-new series of
classic movie reviews-as well as some
musicals leading up to the release of
“Hamilton”, I’m here to let you know that
“West Side Story” is NoPerfectMovie!
As the majority of you already know, “West
Side Story” is “Romeo and Juliet” told in
50’s New York in the vein of a musical;
you have two rival street gangs –
th all-white Jets and the all Puerto Rican
Sharks in the middle of a turf war…
what makes it even more complicated is
that former Jet Tony falls in love with
Maria (Natalie Wood) and Maria’s
brother Bernardo is leader of the Sharks!
Now, one of the reasons I wanted to check
out “West Side Story” is that it was
co-directed by Robert Wise who’s a lot
more well-known for directing “The Sound of Music”,
but before “West Side Story”, he had no
musical experience whatsoever, which is
why the studio brought in Jerome Robbins
to co-direct alongside him… until they
fired him a third of the way through
because they were that concerned about
going over-budget and Wise was a lot
more reputable as a director.

The good
news is Wise actually kept in touch with
Robbins over the course of production
over how to film the musical numbers, how
long to hold on certain shots-stuff like
that that really made such a difference
that Wise agreed Robbins should be
giving co-directing credit… he was,
he also received an Honorary Oscar at the
awards ceremony as opposed to just receiving
Best Director alongside Wise but
nevertheless, the effort really goes to
show because as great as the songs are,
as good as the performances are… the star
of “West Side Story” is the dancing! The
dance numbers are portrayed in these
massive, huge wide-shots in Super
Panavision 70 that feature a lot of
clarity, a lot of bright, vibrant colours,
longer steady takes of the actors
clearly doing their own dance routines!
What I love about these routines is that
“West Side Story” demystifies ballet! It’s
not a strictly feminine form of dance-
in fact, no form of dance is strictly
feminine or masculine and this movie
understands that perfectly! and there’s
so many other people that
I think deserve equal credit for doing
the dance numbers; we have Thomas Sanford
who is considered one of the greatest
film editors ever for the amount of work
that he went into with this movie! We
have Daniel L.Fapps
as the cinematographer who again,
captures Upper West Side New York in
such a massive scope, makes it look like
a dance floor-I’m really hoping that
“In the Heights” has that exact same feel
because that was the vibe that I got
from watching the trailer, and of course
the performers putting in that much
effort to learn their own choreography
so they can do all these impressive
stunts in one single take! My favourite
dance numbers in particular are the
prologue-as many people have pointed out
it shows each street gang, the level of
power they have without any dialogue
whatsoever, this one dance number in a
gymnasium where they’re trying to go at
each other while being civil in front of
this one cop that’s watching, I love that
dance number in particular showing the
dance battles between the two of them in
a single shot in order to build up the
tension between the groups and also
build up the wow factor whenever
a character does a backflip or is
propelled in the air and caught by
another character because what’s so
memorable about “West Side Story” is the
spectacle of it all ,and of course this
one song called “Cool” where the dance
number is supposed to illustrate how
this one gang is trying to keep it
together without a leader but they’re
individually starting to branch off
until one guy steps in and says ‘We do
this as a group, we don’t do this
individually or we’re fucked”! As for
the songs themselves, what I really
appreciated about the songs is that
they’re catchy and memorable as many
people have pointed out but they also
have a fair bit of social commentary
that really propel the story and the
messages along! Of course everyone
remembers “I Feel Pretty” because it’s the most cheerful and uplifting
song and the way that it’s sung &
choreographed really gives you that
fast-paced energy that you need in order
to keep your spirits up with a dark
storyline like this and I’m gonna focus
on some of these song titles because a few
of them are a little trick…y the first
one’s not too tricky-the first one
I want to talk about is called “America”
where the Sharks
and their girlfriends are arguing over
whether or not the benefits of living in
America outdo living in Puerto Rico as
opposed to the Sharks who missed the
dignity and respect of being in Puerto
Rico and the irony of it all is that
even though the song is called “America”
and is sung about America it has this
Latin-American music and vibe that makes
it feel so fast-paced and catchy and was
really the first song that I clicked to
as I was watching the movie! I was also a
really big fan of “Gee, Officer Krupke”
because of the way it pokes fun at the
way society deems outcasts completely
unacceptable and how that intolerance
encouraged the gang members to start up
their own gang… “Maria” as a song does get
really annoying because of just how many
times you hear the name Maria but you
get used to it after a while and the singer in that
scene did a really good job-it wasn’t
the main actor and I’m gonna mention the
singers for the actors
because it’s important; the singer who
dubs Tony was Jack Bryant and he
definitely had a really nice sounding
tenor voice to him and Natalie Wood’s
singing voice was Marni Nixon who also
has this operatic feel to her singing-
especially when she’s singing “I Feel Pretty”,
but the biggest surprise for me
personally was the way “West Side Story”
captures race relations in such a mature,
honest & uncompromising fashion!
As I said before, this is the “Romeo and Juliet”
story, but when you replace two rich
groups with two poor groups of different
ethnicities who are at war with each
other over their lives supposedly
sucking more than the other, it’s already
complex and thought-provoking on its own
but I like the way that this movie isn’t
afraid to point out that even though the
Jets are definitely a peg above the
Sharks just for being white, the Jets
still have it pretty tough;
they have abusive parents, they have
low-level income families, they do poorly
in school and as opposed to being
encouraged by others to work harder,
they’re discouraged by any common
stranger just for being different and
that’s what
leads them to take out their
frustrations in such a racist way
towards the Sharks! And the Sharks face
racism on a daily basis to the point
where whenever any American offers them
something out of genuine compassion, they
say no to it because they’re immediately
distrustful and the movies’ not afraid to
point out that it is an act of judgment
based on race on the Sharks’ part! Nobody
in this movie is given an easy way out
and that was something that I really
respect and admire! I love the way that
it gives us explanations for racial
intolerance but does not use the
explanations as a justification… I’m
getting really heat it as I as I point
all this stuff out ,Wow! With George
Chakiris as Bernardo especially, really
capturing that hateful, spiteful man
who has received so much bigotry over
the course of his life that he can’t
imagine anyone else other than his own
people being compassionate to him! You
don’t condone his actions over the
course of the movie but you definitely
understand where he’s coming from!
Same with Rita Moreno as Maria’s best
friend who tries to support her while
also giving in to her own hatred-
especially during her final scene where
she’s trying to meet Tony and pass off a
secret message out of loyalty to Maria,
but Tony’s friends are so hateful and
kind of rapey in that one scene if I’m
being completely honest that she says
“Fuck this, I’m not gonna help out Maria”!
And she ends up fucking everyone over in
the worst possible way! And in my opinion,
that scene was what gave Moreno the
Oscar; it was that one defining character
moment where someone is trying to be
loyal and supportive to a friend but
based on everything else that’s going on
in her life, she goes “Fuck this, I’ve had
enough”! and and that’s a really important
character to study, it’s an important
character to show how giving up can make
things worse not just for yourself but
for everyone else around you! But I got
to be honest, there is one big issue with
“West Side Story”;
it’s that it focuses so much on the
themes of hatred and injustice that it
kind of overshadows the actual
main story of the movie which is the
romance between Tony and Maria! It’s not
as if the romance isn’t there, it’s just
so underdeveloped compared to the
gang war. And I’m just gonna flat out say
this; the actor who plays Tony
(Richard Beymer) I did not dig his performance-all the
Jets have this over-the-top, New York
Bronx accent that made it a little hard
to give into in the beginning-especially
Russ Tamblyn as Riff but I got used to
the gang after a while. With Tony, he’s so
overly optimistic and cheerful about
everything-especially with his facial
expressions & his line delivery that
I really couldn’t take him seriously as a
character at all. If anything, he’s
actually less developed compared to
Maria who was played exceptionally well
by Natalie Wood! She gave a fantastic
performance really showing the overall
moral conflict of being in love with
someone who has caused a severe amount
of damage to-not just her friends and
family but to her own pride!
It was an arc that I really enjoyed
seeing on screen and I’m glad I got as
much as I did, but it was at the expense
of Tony who is playing a character who…
one would expect his arc would be about
being a bigot then learning how not to be,
but he was already a good person at the
beginning and as a result, it made his
thoughts and feelings towards the
romance and towards making peace with
the other Sharks feel very
inconsequential and kind of random when
he does kinda give in to bigotry in
this one climactic scene during the
middle of the movie-I don’t want to
spoil it if no one has ever read “Romeo and Juliet”
even though chances are half
of you have, but he’s so optimistic about
everything in the majority of the movie
that when he does become pessimistic,
it feels incredibly unrealistic and I
couldn’t really buy into it… but that’s
really all I got! “West Side Story” is
probably one of the best well-made
musicals, I can’t say it’s one of the
best musicals period because the
characterization is pretty hit-and-miss
with the main characters over the side
characters but Robert Wise, Jerome
Robbins did a fantastic job
directing this movie, they captured
the feeling of Sondheim’s music
perfectly, the dance numbers are
incredibly flawless-so many musicals do
not have the exact same magic or
spectacle as they do in this movie and
the performances themselves are really
good. And overall, “West Side Story” is just
the rare musical that really makes you
think about what’s going on in the world!
And for all those reasons, I’m gonna give
“West Side Story” 4/5.
Guys, thanks as always for watching! If you
have seen “West Side Story”, let me know in
the comments below what you thought of
it! Let me know how much you’re looking
forward to the December version coming
up which, I know some people think it’s
a little early for me to talk about it now
but because “Hamilton” prides itself so
much on the main character being Puerto
Rican ,the fact that half the cast in
“West Side Story” is Puerto Rican and watching the movie, I got the
sense that Miranda was inspired by this
movie in particular when he was making
“In the Heights”, so I felt like it was
still warranted to talk about it now!
Plus, if I want to, I might revisit it in
December, who knows? In any case, let me
know your thoughts down below, be sure to
stay tuned for more classic movie
musical reviews and be sure to like and
subscribe!
Take care!

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