First watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GJLwWiYSg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GJLwWiYSg
This, friends, is the best movie I've ever seen. Yes, just like the original 1957 Broadway play, it is a musical. So if you do not like musicals, you need not watch it. And if you like musicals because they are joyously light entertainment, you may not want to watch it.
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet inspired Jerome Robbins' original Broadway production of West Side Story.
William Shakespeare 1597 Jerome Robbins 1957
The young daughter and son of two rich, A young Puerto Rican girl and white boy
powerful Veronese families fall in love. from poor families fall in love.
Two households, both alike in dignity Two gangs, both alike in poverty
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene), in Manhattan's Upper West Side.
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, A neighborhood divided by race,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. being torn down by Urban Renewal.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes Both gangs are losing their "turf."
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life; A pair of star-crossed lovers meet.
....
The fearful passage of their death-marked love Hate warps their death-marked love.
And the continuance of their parents’ rage, If their love cannot defeat hate.
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. Can death?
West Side Story is set in the mid-1950s in Manhattan's Upper West Side. The blue-collar neighborhood is already stressed by limited resources and racial strife. Add to that Urban Renewal. New York City intended to remake substandard inner city housing and limited or deficient community services into a clean, safe place for people to live. It, however, ended up destroying neighborhoods and displacing poor and powerless people.
Robbins' Broadway musical reimagines Shakespeare's wealthy and powerful Veronese Montagues and Capulets with New York City street gangs. Tony, a former member of the white Jets and best friend of the gang's leader, Riff, falls in love with Maria, the sister of Bernardo, the leader of the Puerto Rican Sharks. Their love story inflames already explosive neighborhood racial tensions.
The musical's dark theme focusing on real life, contemporary social problems ending in violence and tragedy expressed in music and dance marked a turning point in American musical theatre.
From the mid-'50s into the '70s, West Side Story's theme was real life experience for the people living in Manhattan's Upper West Side neighborhood. In April, 1955, Mayor Robert J. Wagner, Jr.'s Slum Clearance Committee approved Lincoln Square for Urban Renewal. Committee Chair Robert Moses defended his forced displacement of poor and minority communities saying, "I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without moving people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs."
The Broadway production was nominated for six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in 1958, winning two. The 1961 film adaptation, co-directed by Robert Wise and Robbins, starring Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won ten, including Best Picture.
2021 Enter Steven Spielberg
Is there anything he can't do? And do it better?
Is there anything he can't do? And do it better?
I chose this photo of Spielberg, because in it, he looks like someone I would like to know. Okay, so I've never seen Jaws or Saving Private Ryan and don't intend to, but his movies -- The Color Purple, Schindler's List, Lincoln, The Post, and now the remake of West Side Story make me think he is the kind of man I would like to know.
What is different, 1961 to 2021? Lots and little. The story is the same.
The cinematography has, as one would expect, changed the most in the 60 years since the first West Side Story movie. Technology, technology! Remember they didn't even have cell phones in 1961. No human had yet stepped on the moon. The movie industry was still dangling space ships from wires.
from the 1961 movie from the 2021 production
The new production's light and color seem to heighten the sense of an old neighborhood being torn down to be rebuilt, all shiny and new, for shiny new people because its current residents will not be able to afford to live there.
Top: Rita Moreno as Anita in 1961. Scene shot on a set in a studio.
Bottom: Ariana DeBose as Anita in 2021. Scene shot on the streets of Harlem.
2021 Rita Moreno
as Valentina,
the voice of reason in
Spielberg's West Side Story
The Sharks' leader and Maria's brother Bernardo
1961 Sharks 2021 Sharks
George Chakiris definitely sexier David Alvarez, pretty attractive, too
The Jets' leader and Tony's best friend, Riff
The Balcony scene
1961
Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood
I didn't know if the new Tony and Maria, Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler, could come up to Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood, but they do. If anything, they seem younger which makes the "love at first sight" premise more believable. And their being so quickly swept away by their passion without regard for the tragically strong passions their own would provoke.
2021
Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler
Leonard Bernstein's music and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics are unchanged, "Almost perfect in every way."
A man named Justin Peck, just 34 years old, did the choreography for Spielberg's movie. It's possible his parents weren't even born when the first West Side Story movie was made.
The music and choreography build a solid emotional base for the story.
Spielberg uses Shakespeare's pacing -- build tension then break it with humor. Let the audience relax, then drop the hammer.
In this production, Spielberg follows the threatening behavior at a school dance and an even more aggressive clash on the street between the two gangs with a decidedly humorous scene in the court room. Tension builds again only to be broken by Maria.
Celebrating her new love, she whirls and twirls through the department store where she works as an after-hours cleaner, singing "I Feel Pretty." It's light-hearted and colorful, but reminds us that Maria and her fellow cleaners are too low on the social register to shop in the store they clean.When Maria gets off work, the hammer drops.
The Rumble -- 2021
Take overhead photography,
emphasize shadows,
add music, dance,
threaten death.
Murder happens. More murder happens. Nothing can stop the violence except more murder and threat of murder.
The terrible fabric of violence between people, against love, against hope, woven of music and dance will break your heart.
Claudia--best post yet. You should get this out to a larger audience somehow. Excellent writing.
ReplyDeleteLynn - Could tell how much you loved this movie by your extremely well done review (pictures, history, and the final sentence) that summed up the experience so well. Thank you for this.
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