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West Side Story (1961)

post #1 of 27
2/14/10 at 1:20pm
Thread Starter 
This is pretty much tied with Singing In The Rain as my favourite musicals and it's easily one of my all time favourite films. It's a film which has been in my life as long as I can remember, I grew up with my Grandma and her video collection informing a lot of what I knew about cinema and as such this film was just a film that's always been in my life.

It's an amazing, amazing, experience as a movie and even coming back to it as an adult just solidifies that.

I love the design of the film, one of my favourite things about films from the 40s, 50s and 60s is the sort of pastel colour that they have and this film has that in spades. The set design is incredible too and the choreography is something else.

What really gets me is that the film, despite the innate silliness of the dance fighting, is still really exciting. The choreography, the music, the style of the movie all conspire to create a genuinely thrilling experience. There's real passion and heart in most of the big numbers. It's also still absolutely hilarious, I know Sondheim has sort of abandoned the project as being infantile but I think there's genuine wit and lyricism in everyone of the songs and they're all amazingly passionate.

It's, to reiterate, just an amazingly energetic movie.
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post #2 of 27
2/14/10 at 4:05pm
No argument here. I know there are some folks on here who don't like it very much, and I can't see how. It's just a great piece of cinema. And to echo on the set design, the end credits are just so well done, between the way they're graffitied on the walls and the great medley Bernstein cooked up for it. Love this film.
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post #3 of 27
2/15/10 at 3:45pm
From what I've seen there isn't really a good auteurist theory about Major Themes in Robert Wise's filmography or anything, but on a pure level of produtivity he's made a hell of a lot of great movies - The Set Up, Blood On The Moon, Tribute To A Bad Man, the stuff he did with Val Lewton...

Wets Side Story is an awesome, brassy musical, yeah - that opening is something else too, pretty arthouse for classic Hollywood! Wouldn't rate it with Singing In The Rain (stars not as potent, less laughs), but it's still a pretty perfect film; GREAT soundtrack, too.
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post #4 of 27
2/15/10 at 5:20pm
30 year old flamboyantly gay men pretending to be street tough teenagers in love with 30 year old women pretending to be sassy teenagers.
This one was for the blue-haireds even back then.
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post #5 of 27
2/15/10 at 5:30pm
Well it's not really like anyone's praising the movie for its raw take on gang violence. I don't think WSS's hokeyness damages the movie much.
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post #6 of 27
2/15/10 at 5:40pm
It damages it thoroughly. It's fundamentally insipid and corny (in a bad way, like Chicago or Momma Mia). You guys all think it's good only because it's a "classic" and your grandma liked it. Well I'm here to tell you that you're wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

Or gay.
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post #7 of 27
2/15/10 at 5:46pm
Well that's a relief.
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post #8 of 27
2/15/10 at 8:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug View Post
It damages it thoroughly. It's fundamentally insipid and corny (in a bad way, like Chicago or Momma Mia). You guys all think it's good only because it's a "classic" and your grandma liked it. Well I'm here to tell you that you're wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

Or gay.
Your dismissals were so much more fun when you had the Ren Hoek avatar. That goofy Domingo face kind of lessens the blow.

Oh, and I also like West Side Story. It's pure silly fantasy, but then again, so was Romeo & Juliet.
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post #9 of 27
2/15/10 at 9:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug View Post
30 year old flamboyantly gay men pretending to be street tough teenagers in love with 30 year old women pretending to be sassy teenagers.
This one was for the blue-haireds even back then.
I really don't think any of the gang members in the film read as "flamboyantly gay." George Chakiris is a very masculine dancer. Elegant, but masculine.
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post #10 of 27
2/15/10 at 10:16pm
Obligatory "Hey, this is playing in New York" post. It's at the Zigfield. I don't know for how long.
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post #11 of 27
2/16/10 at 1:31am
Is there a "gay" ticket discount?
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post #12 of 27
2/16/10 at 2:52am
Not that I'm angling for a remake, but the recent Broadway revival (directed by the book's writer Arthur Laurents, who's approximately 206), has the Puerto Rican characters speaking and singing in Spanish, save Anita, whose desire to assimilate is represented by her using English, and switching so Spanish after Bernardo's death. IF anyone wanted another crack at the piece, that would be the hook.
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post #13 of 27
2/16/10 at 2:59am
I show it to my classes after Romeo and Juliet. It lets me talk about film as a visual medium and using appropriations of classic literature. The colors and lighting are great to talk about. However, I do have to convince them to keep watching after the Jets and Sharks introduce themselves.

I heard about that revival. I would love to see that tackled in a remake. Future DVD using Spanish subtitles for English and English subtitles for Spanish.
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post #14 of 27
2/16/10 at 12:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by soylentgreen View Post
Is there a "gay" ticket discount?
Gays get in free if accompanied by their blue haired grandmothers.
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post #15 of 27
2/16/10 at 12:58pm
There is nothing wrong with this film, it achives perfectly what it sets out to do.
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post #16 of 27
2/16/10 at 1:02pm
Thread Starter 
I really don't get what's so flamboyantly gay about the guys playing the Jets or the Sharks, other than the fact they're dancing. They're not exactly tough, but they're hardly acting like full on queens.
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post #17 of 27
2/16/10 at 1:02pm
Of course it's a highly stylized and inaccurate depiction of street gangs. It's a movie musical. It's not trying to be Boyz in the Hood with songs.
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post #18 of 27
2/16/10 at 1:14pm
A musical can be stylized and still convey true drama. Les Miserables, for example. That's fancy and overwrought, but you can take it seriously (the play, not the movie). Or if you're looking for a movie example- Fiddler On The Roof. That had Starsky, btw. Now there's a real man.
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post #19 of 27
2/16/10 at 1:18pm
Thread Starter 
I just don't think the stylised dancing impedes drama, it's just drama hinged on irony more than anything else due to the fact that we as an audience have a cultural memory of Romeo and Juliet and pretty much transpose it straight to this film. We know exactly what's going to happen and as such it's a case of watching the noose tighten more than anything else. West Side Story just seems undramatic due to its high energy, but there's a certain fatalism to a lot of the big song and dance numbers (Officer Krepke is a hilarious number, but it's also utterly depressing).

Then again it is a favourite childhood film of mine so I may be way more reverential than I should be towards it. I'm just more impressed by the propulsiveness of the film (it feels about ninety minutes long rather than two and a half hours)
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post #20 of 27
2/16/10 at 1:40pm
Having twice been involved in productions of Les Miserables, I'd say that, if anything, it's harder to take seriously: the drama is played out in such shorthand (in order to cram so much of the book in there) that if there weren't music cues, it'd be hard to know what you're supposed to be feeling at any given time.

And since I don't much care for the music, I find that something of an obstacle.

It's also not particularly stylized for a stage musical: the characters and setting are drawn pretty straight from the book and the period.

But, of course, it's hard to compare the two, in the sense that what's being criticized about WSS is not the show but the film's specific approach to it and its use of "overage" actors, and there's no equivalent version of Les Miz.
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post #21 of 27
2/16/10 at 2:08pm
Another thing is that West Side Story's source material is already melodramatic over-the-top teen fantasy, while Les Miserables has the rather thankless task of adapting a book whose appeal is at least 40% Victor Hugo Has Opinions 4U.
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post #22 of 27
2/16/10 at 2:20pm
I wasn't really trying to draw a direct comparison. Just using it to point out that it's possible to give a musical weight. West Side Story doesn't have to be all Boyz In Da Hood for me to take seriously.
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post #23 of 27
2/16/10 at 2:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug View Post
I wasn't really trying to draw a direct comparison. Just using it to point out that it's possible to give a musical weight. West Side Story doesn't have to be all Boyz In Da Hood for me to take seriously.
Sure-- I was just suggesting that I don't see Les Miz as being WSS's superior in that regard.
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post #24 of 27
2/16/10 at 2:24pm
Thread Starter 
Side Note: Is the 1998 film version, with Liam Neeson, worth the time of day? I love elements of the book and I'm fascinated how it would translate to film.
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post #25 of 27
2/16/10 at 2:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spike Marshall View Post
Side Note: Is the 1998 film version, with Liam Neeson, worth the time of day? I love elements of the book and I'm fascinated how it would translate to film.
Neeson's great, Rush is good. The film's kind of a slog, though, and radically reworks the last third or so of the book (among other things, neither Enjolras or Eponine even appear in the film).
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post #26 of 27
7/10/11 at 7:48pm

Another check off my AFI's Top 100 List. Again I have very little experience with musicals, but I can respect a good song and dance number.

 

It's amazing to see the genesis of songs I've heard my entire life. "America", "Tonight", and "I feel Pretty" are so ingrained in American consciousness that it was bizarre to see them being acted out.

 

By far my favorite dance is "Cool". The barely restrained emotion, the lighting, and the camera work are all so mesmerizing. Speaking of camera work, that's what really caught my attention. The opening scene is a love note to New York City, but there's an especially experimental, vertigo-inducing overheard shot of an alley as one of the Jets runs down it.

 

The problem with this movie is Tony and Maria are plain boring. Bernardo, Anita, and Riff are the far more provocative characters, but are sidelined due to fidelity to the Romeo & Juliet meta-plot. Speaking of which, and I agree with Roger Ebert's review here, it's a real travesty that Maria doesn't die at the end.

 

As for the discussion above about the gang members not coming across as dangerous or masculine, here's a strange impression I got: the Puerto Rican men didn't come across that way at all, only the white boys in the Jets. Why can Latino men dance and sing and appear masculine? Or is that only a cultural prejudice I bring to the table as an average white American guy?

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post #27 of 27
9/8/11 at 1:42am

Love this film.  I'm honestly surprised that there isn't a remake in the works.

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