West Side Story

Directed by Robert Wise; Choreographed by Jerome Robbins
Written by Ernest Lehman from the Arthur Laurents play
Starring Richard Beymer, Natalie Wood, George Chakiris, Rita Morena
USA, 1961
Not Rated (some violence)

C

POMPOSITY
West Side Story is a great pretender. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the film is astonishingly uninspired in its substance, and so many scenes are intent on shoving fruits of wisdom down our throats in such an appallingly self-important manner. Over the years, it has mysteriously maintained its status as one of the last great movie musicals, not surprisingly finding a spot at number 41 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest American Films. It is sandwiched between two Hitchcock movies that, for all their rhapsodic entertainment, are several times more thoughtful and less pompous than this grandiose windbag. This is the kind of movie that makes Hollywood look wonderful, the kind of movie the Institute enjoys honoring. It is a film that is fixated on being a no-risk commercial and critical success, and on being a great tale of racial injustice and true love. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

The film is one of the many Hollywood musicals to be taken from Broadway. This one was adapted by Ernest Lehman from the Arthur Laurents play, and the film, which is co-directed by the Broadway show’s choreographer Jerome Robbins, has many elements of theatricality. West Side Story, however, is eager to be cinematic, and it establishes this desire by a prologue of New York aerial shots that are stunning. The story focuses on the rivalry between two gangs: the Jets, who are brown-haired all-Americans; and the Sharks, who are Puerto Ricans. Tony (Richard Beymer), who is Polish, falls for the Puerto Rican Maria (Natalie Wood), and their romance suffers because of the hatred the two groups have for each other.

One of the things that offends me most about West Side Story is its overt butchering of Shakespeare’s renowned work. In this film, Romeo and Juliet’s tragic finale with both lovers committing suicide is twisted around to make a more ‘suitable’ picture for the fragile minds of America. What makes the romance in Shakespeare’s play so potent is that the two lovers cannot bear to live in a world without the other, and so they feel they must kill themselves. Here, the spotlight is left on racial prejudice, a topic very pertinent to the ‘60s. In a way, West Side Story’s ending is more painful because Maria (Juliet) is forced to continue living. One might accuse me of sadism, but the changing of the Bard’s original closure makes the film less emotionally stirring and almost entirely severs the film from Romeo and Juliet, making it, to me, seem disrespectful to name West Side Story on the same level of the Shakespeare masterpiece. In the play, it was not a question of whether their suicide was warranted, but West Side Story has presumptuously decided it wasn’t and wants Maria (Juliet) to do the right thing, which is completely beside the point. The new ending is also proof that the film’s intentions were extremely commercial. The romanticism of suicide in Romeo and Juliet, they may have thought, might make the film less palatable. But if West Side Story is so theme-happy and ready to take on the Big Issues, why is it so afraid of the issue of suicide, it being such an important topic?

Romeo and Juliet is certainly an ageless tale, but this film’s ‘poetry of the streets’ is so dated, and its saccharine simple-minded theorizing is an insult to whatever depth the play had. West Side Story pays close attention to its detailed choreography (by Robbins) and its brilliant art direction. The dancing, you can tell, wants to be masterful and wants to evoke the music—I suppose—of violence and gangs (which brings about the same question of why Shakespeare’s ending was mangled), but it hasn’t held up very well with time because of how forced the choreography is. We see gangsters twirling about and it feels ridiculous; the genius of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers looks much better in the year 2000 than the big kicks of these dances do. Pauline Kael, in her scathing review in the Film Quarterly, wondered if the dancing was supposed to have meaning, sarcastically guessing that the higher the kick or bigger the jump, the more dramatic and important the choreography was meant to be.

Even the music, which some call "beguiling," feels out-of-place. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim were phenomenal writers, but there are only two songs that stand out as close to wonderful in this film’s massive score: the beautiful "Tonight" and the simple but compelling "One Hand, One Heart." The way the songs are performed doesn’t help. Even the latter, which is gorgeous, sounds better sung by Barbra Streisand and Johnny Mathis on her mediocre Back to Broadway album than it does by the singing voices who dubbed for Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer. The only number performed with flair is the lyrically and melodically flimsy "America"; all the rest feel misplaced in the way "Moses Supposes" did in Singin’ in the Rain. In addition, West Side Story has none of the perfect joy of dancing and singing that was so beautifully, symmetrically contained in Singin’ in the Rain. Many of the numbers look like a mess and are unmemorable.

Robert Wise, director of The Sound of Music and melodramas like I Want to Live!, has crafted a self-congratulatory message movie, the kind that has been seen before and too often. One gets the feeling that the film’s immense scope, its cinematography, its music, are just ways to cover up a skinny script. If you take out the dancing and singing, what do you have left? Bad acting, for one thing. Rita Morena and George Chakiris have (Oscar-winning) spunk, but their characters, especially Chakiris’, are just shadows. Natalie Wood was amazing in West Side Story’s obvious influence, Rebel Without a Cause (which, I feel, is much more relevant today than this movie), and Splendor in the Grass. Here, she just jumps up and down announcing "I Feel Pretty" and spouting extraordinarily tepid speeches courtesy of Lehman. At least Richard Beymer has some enthusiasm and life. Their chemistry is adequate, but not explosive like the rest of the movie, leaving a hole in the film’s fabric. I feel I am being too harsh in my criticisms, because I do enjoy the movie and I do like it a bit, but, though the romance is moving enough, I always feel cheated at the end.

Even the awe-inspiring graffiti credits, designed by the great Saul Bass (who else?), want to push the film to a higher level, and it is clear the movie’s just out for a few tears, bucks, and Academy Awards. And it received. West Side Story wants to be important and applauds itself (in the Hollywood way) when it was merely reaching. It looks good and people say it’s great and significant, and so we take their word for it, to paraphrase Kael’s analysis. That’s its problem.

By Andrew Chan

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