• West Side Story (1961 film)

12/3/25 (Wed)

I hadn’t seen this version of the film in decades, so I took advantage of the 10am classic movie series sponsored by Toho Cinemas to see it on the big screen. I especially wanted to refresh my memory after Spielberg’s remake a few years back. The older work has one of the most spectacular openings ever, introducing the delinquents on both sides in dance. That could have come off as ridiculous, but Jerome Robbins, adapting his stage choreography to the NY streets, made the conceit work wonderfully. He took full advantage of the wider canvas to show both groups interacting with innocents – shopkeepers, kids in playgrounds, passersby – and thus give a better picture of the disdain of both groups for society. The picture has a better balance of the sides, not just innocent Hispanics against meanie whites but two sets of alienated youngsters fighting for meaningless bits of turf. The scenario makes clear that the white Jets also terrorized two Irish-sounding groups that they perceived as muscling in on their territory, suggesting that they saw the Hispanics as just the latest group of potential rivals. That makes the final message much more powerful, much closer to the Romeo & Juliet theme. It was refreshing to see this from today’s perspective.

The leads, if not overly exciting, were absolutely fine and certainly nice to look at. On the Shark side, George Chakiris (who became super-popular in Japan) and especially a fiery Rita Moreno had the showiest roles and made the most of them, effortlessly dominating every scene they were in. The film has been criticized for using non-Hispanics in the Shark roles (Chakiris apparently played Tony on stage), but it didn’t bother me at all at this level of acting/dancing. While I’m not a fan of racially blind casting, at least they found terrific actors, which isn’t always the case with these things. (The casting notice for the Spielberg remake put more emphasis on Spanish language than dancing ability. I suspect a number of those dancers wouldn’t have lasted a day with Jerome Robbins.) The Jets were equally good, starting with an utterly natural performance by Russ Tamblyn. He doesn’t seem to get much notice in reviews, but I thought he was an A+ on both the acting and dancing sides. He deserved a supporting Oscar nomination along with his co-stars. The Jewish shopkeeper was a nice contrast with the two groups, and both officers were fine in more stereotypical roles (Officer Krupke repeated his Broadway role).

The dialogue could be wooden at times, and the rearrangement of the songs was not always to the show’s advantage, affirming the wisdom of the stage writers. Still, the staging was first rate throughout. Apparently Robbins was fired at some point when his perfectionist ways started costing too much money and aggravation, but his influence is clear in every scene. Dance was the key element in this innovative stage show, and it remains irreplaceable here in its delineation of story and character, taking over where dialogue alone (especially the film dialogue) is insufficient. The sweeping camerawork, whether by co-director Robert Wise or Robbins, made the dances feel spontaneous and live. That (along with its absence of politics) was the biggest difference with the Spielberg version, where dance was largely decorative. The scale of the film made me glad I saw it in a theater. The promised 4x re-mastered version evidently wasn’t delivered, so we saw the old 2x version. Looked pretty awesome to me. Strongly recommended.