West Side Story

Feels like I am finally getting to movies people have actually heard of. And this one is still pretty popular. West Side Story was the first of 4 musicals to win Best Picture in the 60’s and won a total of 10 awards making it the most honored musical in Oscar history. Another interesting fact I did not know was that originally the play was going to be called East Side Story and be about a Jewish girl and a Catholic boy. Either way it still is a good movie.

The movie is a modern take on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It is about two gangs the Sharks and the Jets. The Sharks are a Puerto Rican gang that the Jets feel are taking over their territory. At the same time Tony (Richard Beymer) a member of The Jets falls in love with Maria (Natalie Wood) the sister The Sharks leader. Both gangs are not happy about this new found love and they do what they can to try to break it up. All around Tony and Maria people are fighting and there is mistrust and they think they can find a way to make everything better. Yet all their optimism can’t stop the tragedy that is coming.

This movie still feels fresh today. It is hard to believe that it is 50 years old. The music by Leonard Bernstein lyrics by Stephen Sondheim still hold up. The dancing does feel a little silly and corny but that might have to do with the fact that it has been often imitated and spoofed. Still it does seem odd that there will be that many spinning pirouettes in a movie about fighting gangs. The movie started with two directors, Jerome Robbins who directed and choreographed the Broadway production and Robert Wise who had directed some horror movies. These two directors seemed to come from different worlds but Robbins was hired to direct all the musical parts and Wise was to direct the dramatic elements. Robbins who wanted everything to be perfect took so long directing his parts that the film ran over budget and the actors were exhausted and injured from all the dancing. He was eventually fired and yet the two became the first team to win the best directing Oscar. The only other duo to win is the Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men in 2007. The movie also won best supporting actor and actress for George Chakiris as the leader of the Sharks and Rita Moreno as his girlfriend Anita. They beat out favorites in two great movies Judgment at Nuremberg and The Hustler. While neither of the two lead got nominated for this film Natalie Wood was nominated for Splendor in the Grass.
It was ranked 41 on AFI’s Top 100 in 1997 and 51 in 2007.

The night after I saw the movie I was watching the Colbert Report and Stephen Sondheim who wrote the famous lyrics for the movie was on. So, I included the link if you would like to see the fun interview.
Colbert Report-Stephen Sondheim Interview