I Watch Films: West Side Story (1961)

 

West Side Story (1961)

In New York’s Upper West Side there are two gangs, the Jets, who are white kids, mostly second generation immigrants, and the Sharks, Puerto Ricans, recent arrivals. There’s trouble between them that the police break up. Riff, the leader of the Jets, decides to hold a war council with the Sharks to decide on a rumble that will determine who rules the streets. Riff asks his friend Tony, a Jets co-founder, to join them at the dance, neutral ground, where they’ll arrange the meeting. Tony is reluctant, he has a job at Doc’s drug store and doesn’t want trouble but agrees.

They go, despite the best efforts of the people who arranged it the Sharks and Jets don’t mix. Bernado, leader of the Sharks, is there and has brought his sister Maria. Tony and Maria meet and fall in love at first sight, before being pulled apart by Bernardo.

The story inevitably turns towards tragedy, the Sharks and Jets fated to fight, Tony and Maria torn apart by it. The Sharks have come to New York looking for a better life and maybe they’ve found one but they have to fight for it. The Jets, half a step above, aren’t willing to give way. It is, of course, a musical, and more than that a dance film. The fights, even groups walking down the street are stylised, set to music.

Watch This: A tour de force of integrating song, dance and music into a film
Don’t Watch This: Displacing Romeo And Juliet in time and space and adding a bunch of songs does nothing for it