9 / 10
West Side Story is the 1961 American musical directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, adapting the 1957 Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, and Robbins. The film transplants Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the streets of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The Jets, a gang of working-class white youths, feud with the Sharks, a gang of Puerto Rican immigrants. Tony, a former Jet, falls in love with Maria, sister of Sharks leader Bernardo. Natalie Wood plays Maria. Richard Beymer plays Tony. Russ Tamblyn plays Jets leader Riff. George Chakiris plays Bernardo. Rita Moreno plays Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita. The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman. The film was produced by Mirisch Pictures on a budget of approximately 6 million dollars and grossed approximately 44 million dollars worldwide. The work won ten Academy Awards including Best Picture.
The film is one of the classic American musicals and the dominant film musical of its decade. The Bernstein score and Sondheim lyrics gave the form material that exceeded what stage musicals typically received. The Robbins choreography brought a balletic seriousness to American street violence. The Robbins-Wise co-direction credit reflects production conflicts that resulted in Robbins being removed from the film midway through shooting. Chakiris and Moreno won Best Supporting Actor and Actress. The work’s racial politics have produced ongoing critical engagement about casting choices that the 2021 Spielberg remake addressed differently. The result is a film whose musical achievement remains undisputed even as its cultural elements have been re-examined.
Bernstein and Sondheim
The Bernstein score combined jazz, Latin rhythms, and modernist concert music in ways American popular music had not previously combined them. The Cool sequence uses fugue structure. America employs cross-rhythms drawn from Puerto Rican folk forms. Maria is built on the tritone interval that medieval theorists called the devil in music. The score treats the audience as capable of receiving sophisticated material that Broadway had typically diluted.
Sondheim’s lyrics were his first major produced work. He was twenty-five when he wrote them. The work contains lines he later considered embarrassing including parts of I Feel Pretty. The overall achievement remains substantial. The lyrics to America compress immigrant ambivalence into a debate format. The lyrics to Somewhere refuse the conventional optimism the musical form typically demanded. The score and lyrics together raised what musicals could attempt.
For Writers
Material that exceeds genre expectations forces the genre to catch up. Apply this to your own field. Producing work above the prevailing standard expands what the standard becomes.
The Robbins Choreography
Robbins had been a classical ballet choreographer at New York City Ballet before West Side Story. He brought ballet vocabulary to gang violence. The Jets snap their fingers and execute pliés. The Sharks dance with the controlled aggression Robbins had developed working with George Balanchine. The choreography refuses to treat street violence as anything other than dangerous while making it visually beautiful.
The opening sequence introduces the Jets through fifteen minutes of dance-fight instead of dialogue. The audience learns who these characters are through how they move. Robbins demonstrated that dance could carry narrative weight that dialogue conventionally handled. The result became standard for subsequent dance films. La La Land, In the Heights, and others trace their vocabulary to the West Side Story opening.
For Writers
A non-verbal element can carry exposition that verbal elements typically handle. The same logic operates in fiction. Show through action, gesture, or environment what conversation would have communicated less efficiently.
The Casting Question
The original production cast white actors in many Puerto Rican roles. Natalie Wood plays Maria in brownface makeup. Richard Beymer’s Tony was dubbed by tenor Jimmy Bryant. Rita Moreno, who was actually Puerto Rican, has discussed the brownface makeup applied to her despite her natural complexion being appropriate. The choices reflect 1961 Hollywood casting practices that subsequent decades have evaluated differently.
The 2021 Spielberg remake cast Puerto Rican actors in the Puerto Rican roles. The remake also reduced English subtitles for the Spanish dialogue to require white viewers to encounter Spanish without translation. Both films treat the same source material. Both films make different choices about who should play which roles and which decisions about casting carry political content. The 1961 film’s musical achievements remain. The casting questions are real and worth engaging.
For Writers
Production decisions carry political content whether the film intends it or not. The same applies to creative work. The choices you make about who is represented and how will be evaluated by future audiences using standards you cannot predict.
Craft Note
Robbins was fired from the film during production due to budget overruns and scheduling problems. The credited co-direction reflects the unusual situation that the man who choreographed this film and conceived the project was removed before completing it. Wise finished the film. Robbins still won Best Director alongside Wise. The result is one of the rare Academy Awards given to two directors for the same film.
Verdict
West Side Story is one of the defining American musicals and the dominant film musical of its decade. The Bernstein-Sondheim score raised what musical material could attempt. The Robbins choreography established that dance could carry narrative weight. The casting decisions reflect 1961 Hollywood practices that current audiences should engage with awareness. Worth viewing for anyone interested in American musicals, in Shakespeare adaptation, or in films whose achievements and limitations have been re-evaluated over the years.