Saturday, December 9, 2017

West Side Story (Movie Review by Bob Racine)


2 hrs & 31 min, color, 1961



Here is a trivia question for all you movie goers and fans: Who is the only director ever fired from a film in the middle of production who went on nevertheless to win an Oscar for that very direction? 

The answer: Jerome Robbins, co-director with Robert Wise on the movie version of “West Side Story”.  He was fired for becoming over the months of production extremely difficult to work with.  Robbins, as many of you know, was responsible for designing the choreography on the musical, not only for the movie, but for the original stage production.  In a very real sense it is his show.  And because the work of the choreographer was so essential to the staging, he was given the title credit of Director.  Practically everybody in the huge cast did both singing and dancing during the running time, and Wise was not a dance director.  He could never have brought the picture off without Robbins’ genius.  It is a picture of extensive body movement, not just in the dancing but in the walking and running and fast-stepping of the players in the fine points of their performances.  I suppose Wise oversaw the dramatic close-ups, but it was Robbins who gave the brilliant film its pace and its beat. 

It was an unprecedented screen work upon first release in 1961.  Leonard Bernstein’s score and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics were unusually demanding on the cast and crew.  It made a sound that had never been made on the Hollywood screen before, and dancing had never been used on screen before as we see it.  The Rock era was only five years along, and movie audiences had not yet grown accustomed to the strange new offbeat/backbeat/street beat, jagged footloose-ness and finger snapping of the words and melodies.  Without a doubt Robbins was an essential in the movie’s creation.       

But what tripped him up was his perfectionism.  He was never satisfied, changing his mind over and over about the setup of a choreographed scene.  On the stage he was working from scratch and had much more authority and flexibility; there was much more room for experimentation.  But making a movie is vastly different from mastering a stage.  The result of his obstinacy was tightened control by United Artists.  Not only was he threatening to lengthen the shooting time exponentially and put the producers in jeopardy of having players leaving the film to fulfill previously made commitments elsewhere, but money was also a strong consideration.  He was costing them  a lot of it at a time when movies were generally in a slump and studios were tight with a buck.  Those of you under fifty years of age in all likelihood are not aware of that.  

In some ways the stage is a stronger medium than the screen, but in other respects, quite visible and dominant here, the screen has greater possibilities.  The movie’s opening is quite a bender of expectation.  Well before there is any personal confrontation we get a sweeping overview of New York from the lower Battery up to a west side playground by way of an aerial air born camera pointed straight down  and panning steadily in a leftward direction, with finger snapping music slowly coming upon the audience’s ear.  It is like being told that “Somewhere in the big city a heart beats – maybe many hearts.  Dreams and soiled ambitions are perking in a pot.  So let’s go find and visit them.”  Then it ends with a fast zoom shot down onto the playground.  

Actually the movie got made just in time.  Once shooting stopped, that entire section of the city was bulldozed to make room for Lincoln Center, upon which construction started immediately afterward.  That means that there is nowhere anyone can visit today in which the settings can be found.  I do not know whether it was planned that way or not, but if the city designers and the studio had not mutually cooperated, the results film-wise might have been disastrous.  

Now here is another trivia question: What famous movie critic thought “West Side Story” was corny and crude and predicted that the music would be passe and forgotten in not more than a decade.  The answer: Pauline Kael, famed critic for the New Republic magazine in her early years and for The New Yorker in her later life, not to mention her many books about movies and various special articles she wrote.  I will not go into her life; I simply mention that she made many enemies among her fellow critics and wrapped herself in a mantle of controversy that grew more and more thick the older she got before her death from Parkinson’s disease in 2001 at age 82, many years after her retirement.  She did have a shrewd way with words and could be very entertaining for readers with her humor.  She had admirers but not a lot of close friends in show business.   

It is needless to point it out but I will anyway: Kael could not have been more wrong in her prediction.  It is almost universally agreed that “West Side Story” is Bernstein’s greatest musical achievement, and considering all he composed over his long and productive life and career, that is saying a bunch.  His melodies from that scenario are heard quite frequently, on radio, TV and just about every medium you can think of.  The play has been produced dozens of times in various venues and continues to emerge within the clear hearing of the public.  And what is remarkable is that despite all the unconventional material the show contains, there are easy to follow melodies that cozy up to us with such sweet effect, ones that are not sentimental but that are heartfelt and passionate and have soul and radiance.  Every musical number is without doubt a showstopper, an event – a bridge crossed to move the plot along, not a detour or a mere dalliance.  Everything that happens musically contributes something essential.

At the core of it we have the soul and spirit of Shakespeare.  The story is basically “Romeo and Juliet”, the bard’s timeless tale about young lovers trying to penetrate walls of social division and hate to make a chosen life for themselves in the face of impending tragedy, only instead of the streets of Verona, Italy during the Renaissance we have the mean streets of New York City in the middle of the 20th century.  Instead of two prominent well established feuding families acting out of bitter, age old rivalry we have delinquent street gangs baiting each other into open warfare to get control of neighborhood territory.  One is the native Jets and the other Puerto Rican immigrant kids who call themselves the Sharks.  Every segment of the plot comes right out of the centuries-old play starting, as the play does, in a public place in which the antagonists annoy, insult, punch, provoke, trip, chase and finally clash with each other.  Only while Shakespeare employs mostly words, Bernstein uses nothing but soundtrack music.  The seemingly runaway score proves, for those willing to get into it, not runaway at all.  It has design and organized energy and leads somewhere decisive.  It is, aside from being ingeniously composed, very forceful and confrontational.  

I know I am not giving anything away to say that the story revolves around a native teen boy named Tony (derived from Anton) weary of his delinquent past, and Maria, a sheltered Puerto Rican girl just recently arrived in the States from the Caribbean. They are the tragic, star-crossed lovers caught between the rival gangs.  Natalie Wood scores high as Maria and Richard Beymer does an earnest job of making Tony stand tall and strong, even though his sweet baby face at times gets in the way of what should be a tough demeanor.  Their scenes together draw out the very best in each, until the climactic sequence when death parts them.  Wood dominates the entire closing sequence; it is one of her finest screen moments.  We watch her turn from a dreamy kid into a hateful antagonist herself, from fantasy to crushing reality.  

Then a film that has thrived on fast movement and colliding fury fades gently out in grief and silent mortification.  All that is left are distant echoes and melodic recaps over closing credits.  Tre-men-dous!

But there is another player in this tragedy who deserves the highest marks of all.  Her name is Rita Moreno; she  fills the part of Maria’s friend Anita,  the lover of her older brother Ricardo (George Chakiris), leader of the Sharks, and when I say fills it, I mean she  makes every second of it her own.  She is totally electrifying in every respect.  Hers may be a supporting role, but I cannot imagine the film without her.  She is a very active and aggressive force, oozing sensuality out of every pore, a feisty foil for male high-mindedness all about her.  She strikes chords that ring the rafters in every direction.  She is quite a dancer too; she and Chakiris in the “America” number on the rooftop do some configuring that still astounds me after all these decades.  They are in every regard over the top.  (Moreno can currently be seen as the mother in the TV series “One Day at a Time” recently reviewed on this blog.)  

And a word needs to be said for Russ Tamblyn, who plays Riff, the acting leader of the Jets.  He is sharp and right on cue in every scene in which he appears; he too is quite an accomplished hoofer.  It was a pleasure to watch him, both in the choreography and in the dramatic moments.  

Anita and Ricardo try to take Maria and her roving eye in tow, but she slips out of their control and falls hook, line and sinker for Tony, and that is when the big trouble begins.  That is when the tribal solidarity throws up a roadblock to love and understanding.  That is when the latent savagery comes to the surface.     

“West Side Story” will live on and on.  It is the saga of displaced youth struggling for survival in a world others have created, youth forlorn, uprooted and misdirected.  It is the kind of thing that deserves front page attention in any age, including ours, wherein such deathly dangers threaten to snuff out otherwise beautiful lives.      


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.