West Side Story (1961)

Why do you kids live like there's a war on?

West Side Story is directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Simon Oakland and Ned Glass. Music is by Leonard Bernstein (lyrics by Stephen Sondheim) and cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp.

In the less affluent areas of the upper West Side of Manhattan, New York, a gang of Polish-American teenagers called "The Jets" are in conflict with a rival gang of immigrated Puerto Ricans called "The Sharks". They each thirst to own the neighborhood streets, but with tensions reaching peak point, two kids, one from each rival gang, fall in love...

A Multi Oscar winner, West Side Story is a musical update of Romeo & Juliet. Set in the 50s in a steamy gangland New York...

Not one for me.

I did not enjoy 1961's <em>'West Side Story'</em>, unfortunately. I felt almost everything about it to be kinda crappy if I'm honest. For one I didn't feel any chemistry with the cast, with no standout performer in sight; and that's on top of the iffy casting itself. None of the music - aside from that one tiny bit of "Tonight" - hits and the story comes across as forced.

The musical numbers are also extremely staged, the whole thing feels like a stage performance rather than a film; in fact, I genuinely assumed that the actors were just Broadway performers - à la <em>'<a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/jersey-boys/" rel="nofollow">Jersey Boys</a>'</em>. New York City also doesn't feel real or, away from the main characters, lived in.

Admittedly musicals aren't ...

**An old musical with some hints of ethnic prejudice, and it didn't seem as good as I thought it would be.**

This is one of those films that, honestly, I find difficult to understand. It is a production that brought to the cinema an interesting Broadway musical, which is still shown in several places today, and which tells a story similar to Romeo and Juliet in the context of youth gang wars in New York in the mid-20th century. The idea is seductive, and developing it from Shakespeare's source material is a point of quality. But sixty years have passed, and it is worth rethinking some things.

The film was directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, and makes great use of the action and music of the theatrical version, having achieved resounding box office and critical success, in add...