West Side Story

West Side Story George Fleeton See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! West Side Story had a sensational opening on Broadway in September 1957. The songs were street smart and tougher than Rodgers and Hammerstein. The dance set pieces were athletic, acrobatic, expressive of gang spirit, and the ghosts of disaffected youth – Jim Stark (Rebel without a Cause) and Terry Malloy (On the Waterfront) – were watching in the wings. The film version of that mould-breaking Broadway musical is now 50 years old and, newly digitally restored, it was shown recently at the Queens Film Theatre Belfast (October 22-26^th). [caption id="attachment_30892" align="alignleft" width="220" caption="The Sharks in West Side Story."][/caption] Leonard Bernstein (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) and Jerome Robbins (choreography) doff their collective cap at Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (which was first staged c. 1596-97), but then sing and dance away from Verona to the upper west side of Manhattan to tell a substantially different story of two teenagers in love caught up in a bitter street gang feud between immigrant white youth and more recently arrived Puerto Ricans. Gone therefore are the pillars upon which Shakespeare built the dramatic credibility of his play: the tragic outcome as the fault of the blind self-interest of adults, his effective characterisations and writing of intense lyricism. Bernstein and his team had other agendas. When they were writing the Broadway show prior to 1957, the kids born after Pearl Harbour were getting both restless and restive. Elvis was the dominant, vigorous personality of early rock and roll. James Dean was cinema’s cultural icon for disaffected teenagers, those new kids on the block, wearing rebel without a cause on their sleeves, and listening – in 1955, the year Dean died – to Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes and Hound Dog on the juke- box at the soda-fountain. By the time the film of West Side Story appeared, a lot had changed: Jack Kennedy had been in office for a year, the space race was on, and ‘ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’ would make no impression on the Jets and the Sharks for all their swagger and physical grace, on West 64^th Street. Even the making of the film was troubled. [caption id="attachment_30893" align="alignright" width="236" caption="A scene from the original film of West Side Story."][/caption] Real New York was not to feature (anymore that it would in Breakfast at Tiffany’s released at exactly the same time). Robbins’ skills as a Broadway stage director did not transfer to film. He had shot most of the dance sequences when Robert Wise was called in as visiting fireman to trouble-shoot and to direct the non-musical scenes, which were less dynamic and less inventive. Indeed the awkward gear changes, between the stylised gang scenes, the war council and the rumble, versus the bland love scenes, are a constant reminder that two directors were working at this. Hence the tangibly uneven grain throughout the finished film. Wise’s time on this film is such a waste. He had started professional life as film editor on Citizen Kane twenty years earlier and had also tidied up Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons. He then spent the rest of his life searching among various film genres for his natural niche as a director. It was not to be. His most interesting film is the less than well known Born to Kill (1947). West Side Story was his first musical. And it still sounds and looks fresh, with impressive, narrative-jolting set piece dance numbers and darker scenes, as when Anita is humiliated by the Jets, or the three hate deaths. Four years later however Wise’s Sound of Music defined GUBU: grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. And yet West Side Story is not without measurable significance in film history. The first verifiable talking picture thought it was a musical, The Jazz Singer in 1927. The Great Depression meant escapism and fantasy on the screen, and MGM’s speciality: the musicals of Busby Berkeley, Fred and Ginger, Gershwin, Porter, Kern, Berlin, Kelly and Minnelli. No one asked how you can take seriously characters that keep bursting into song and dance. And so West Side Story ran up the blind side of all that and the musical changed for ever because it had unwittingly prepared the ground for new musicals with slight elements of social issues, racism, liberal sentiments, fresh ideas and much imagination: Cabaret, Sweet Charity, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, All that Jazz and The Commitments. This must all seem very naïve, admirable but unrealistic, in 2011 especially since the film musical genre is now such a rarity. There was a powerful bias then in show business for happier endings and safe entertainment. In this version of West Side Story, such elements predominate. The contemporary ballet of Jerome Robbins, the acrobatics and jazz dance are still exhilarating, and the supporting cast steals the principals’ thunder. [caption id="attachment_30895" align="alignright" width="400" caption="West Side Story... dancing on the rooftops."][/caption] Poor, tragic Natalie Wood is not at the fair, singing voice dubbed by Marni Nixon. So let’s remember her for Rebel without a Cause and The Searchers, a few years before that. Saul Bass’ ends credits, hand drawn in chalk on walls, fences and doors, are worth waiting for: they convey the spirit and the concerns of the film we have just watched. His opening credit sequence is Panavision 70mm abstract art by comparison, seen under Berstein’s extended overture, over four minutes of broken, vertical scratches. And Bernstein himself – America’s Mozart, expansive, versatile, investigating every known sub-set of classical and contemporary music, principal conductor of the US’ oldest orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, composer of operas (Candide), musicals (On the Town), and film scores (On the Waterfront). But his studio recording of West Side Story in 1984 with Kiri te Kanawa and José Carreras, two classically trained voices, was a serious error of judgement on his part as it only showed up how slight and awkward are Sondheim’s lyrics, in ‘Something’s Coming’, ‘Maria’,  ‘America’, ‘Tonight’, ‘I Feel Pretty’, ‘One Hand One Heart’,  ‘Somewhere’ and ‘Cool’. Still definitely a film to be relished, on a big screen, and we will be joining in and humming the melodies on our way home afterwards. There is also a stage production of West Side Story, as part of the Festival at Queen’s, in May Street Church from October 26-29^th.]]>