41. West Side Story(1961) directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins Next: #40. North By Northwest
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My Thoughts Before I Watched It
Musical. Love story. Early 60s. Like Gangs of New York, with all the violence and drama replaced by dancing and finger-snapping. Feel the anticipation.
The PremiseIt's the story of Romeo and Juliet, retold and updated to include street gangs in 1961 New York. The Jets are the white gang, the Sharks are the Puerto Rican gang. Tony (former Jet leader now in semiretirement) falls for Maria (the sister of the Sharks' leader) and vice versa. Everyone sings and snaps their fingers a lot. Main characters die.
Notes and Stuff- The Sharks/Jets feud wasn't actually finally settled until March 20, 1996, when the Sharks pounded the Jets 7-1. Jeff Friesen got a hat trick and Arturs Irbe came back from an injury to nearly record a shutout. The Jets, fighting off the Mighty Ducks for the 8th and final playoff spot, were dismayed. Later that year, the Jets moved to Phoenix and the city of Winnipeg was never heard from again.
- One more cutesy sports item, then I'll get back to the movie. I started writing my own version of the Jets fight song (and this is more NY-specific) (and the tune's not quite right, but you get the idea. You want Weird Al, you pay for Weird Al.):
When you're a Jet, you are bound for third place
'Cause we don't even play in our own private space
When you're a Jet every year starts with hope
Until December comes, then you look like a dope
It happens each year, our future will look bright
But our lousy coaches can't seem to call a game right! Like Richie Kotite!
We're worse than the Bills and the Patriots too
At least the Dolphins stink as much as we do
We had Al Toon, we had Freeman McNeil
At the draft, we thought Keyshawn was a steal
We'll stop singing soon, this is getting kind of wordy
But some of these names just make us feel dirty! Like Testaverde!
We are the Jets, our opponents will feast
We're the joke of the AFC East
Of the whole...buggin'...AFC East!! - All right, on to the movie. Did you know it starts with a 5-minute overture? And that I sat through the whole thing? Time is very subjective...
- Visually, this movie is pretty cool. IMDB says it was filmed partly in a Hollywood studio and partly in New York. Wherever the NY exterior scenes were filmed, I think they nailed it.
- I know I'm not the first person to say that Stephen Sondheim knows how to write a catchy song. But I'll say it anyway. "I Like It Here In America"..."Gee, Officer Krupke"...they'll be running through my head off and on for a while now. And I guess that's OK, considering I've primarily had Journey's "Separate Ways" running through my head for the last week or so.
- The Jets and Sharks have their pre-rumble planning session at Doc's Candy Store. Now...is it me...or is there no candy anywhere in sight? What kind of candy store wouldn't have candy? It's like Dunkin' Donuts running out of doughnuts (OK, that's actually happened to me twice...and I ain't going there for their 'coffee',) The inside of Doc's, frankly, looks like the apothecary at one of those historically-recreated-village sites, where the main attraction is a pestle and mortar, and 30 fidgety 3rd-graders waiting for Goodman Weems to finish his lecture so they can go outside and chase sheep again.
- Maybe I've mentioned my parents' old Zingers from the Hollywood Squares books (a comedy gold mine) in the past. Anyway, there was one question where they asked the star, "Robert Goulet says he will never perform this song in public again. What song?" The star (let's assume Paul Lynde) replied: "I Feel Pretty". Heh heh. (The correct answer, if I remember correctly, was the National Anthem). GOULET!
- After "I Feel Pretty" (and how many times have I started a sentence with those four words?), next comes the scene in the bridal shop where Tony and Maria have a mock wedding with the dummies (the costume dummies, ha ha) in their tuxedos and dresses. It's so cute I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
- The fight scene was well-choreographed and cool. Bernardo killing riff was good; Tony killing Bernardo was better, since it's full of the foreboding and gloom and foreshadowing and whatnot.
- After Maria finds out Tony killed her brother, he comes bounding up the back staircase and they have their tearful and fateful reunion. I find this a little hard to swallow. Now everyone has a few qualities they look for in a potential boy/girlfriend, and some they specifically don't want. When I'm doing my prescreening (I know what some of you are about to say...SHUT UP), near the top of my list of dealbreakers are 1) Is she a Yankees fan? 2) Is she a Republican? 3) Has she recently stabbed to death a member of my family? (Not necessarily in that order.) It's a short, but important, list. I don't know what Maria's politics or baseball-politics are, but she's apparently willing to let #3 slide. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
- One of the Jets actually utters the line, "Cut the frabbajabba". Remember, this was 20 years before Mr. T.
- If you're familiar with Romeo and Juliet, you know the end. He thinks she's dead so he kills himself; she's not really dead, but when she finds out he is dead, she kills herself. In this one, Anita makes Tony think Maria's dead (after nearly getting gang-raped by the Jets -- about a 7.8 on the Vengeance Scale, sending Tony after Chino and getting Tony killed. But Maria doesn't kill herself in this movie; I wonder why the thought of suicide, while OK for Eliabethan England, was too outre for 1960s America. Oh well. She has her pain to deal with. Anita has her bittersweet pain and guilt to deal with. And Chino goes to jail for a while, then is released to invent a new kind of trousers. A lot of unanswered questions.
Best Line
(While singing "Gee, Officer Krupke"; Action is playing a psychiatrist)
Action: In my opinion, this child does not need to have his head shrunk at all. Juvenile delinquence is purely a social disease.
Riff: Hey, I got a social disease!
I liked it better than I thought. Some of the musical numbers seemed a little crammed in, but hey - I've never claimed to love musicals. Visually and intangibly, the director really puts you into the story. It's also a rare movie that sets up a hero/villain dichotomy (with, of course, the Sharks and Bernardo as the villains) that doesn't necessarily make you root for the heroes. I found the Sharks just as (if not more) sympathetic than the Jets (of course, I never heard the Sharks' theme song, so that may have something to do with it).
The one thing I didn't quite get was whether this felt like a love story set against a gang-war backdrop, or a gang-war story with a lovey subplot. I think it was supposed to be the former, but it seems like a lot more of the plot and the attention was devoted to the latter. Or maybe it's the best love story ever, and my cynical heart just completely missed the point. Whatever. The fact is, I do feel pretty, dammit!
CastNatalie Wood as Juliet, Richard Beymer as Romeo, Rita Moreno as Juliet's friend, Russ Tamblyn as Romeo's friend, George Chakiris as the dead guy in the middle, and William Bramley as Officer Krupke.
