West Side Story

Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise, USA, 1961
4 out of 4 stars

I saw this film in my capacity as a “projectionist” (actually, I just put in the tape or the DVD) for an undergraduate class, and many of the people there couldn’t help but laugh, even though the professor asked them to look past the cheesiness that admittedly is present in the film. But much as this film is now a touchstone for its now laughably tame portrayal of gang violence, it is actually quite far from the cheesefest that its reputation suggests.

There are certainly weaknesses, such as the sometimes-uncomfortable minstrelsy of two of the three actors portraying the principle Puerto Rican characters (silly accents, mostly, especially in the singing), and the just plan weakness of the white male lead. In fact, I think the best parts of the movie don’t even include the main couple, which makes it amazing that the film works at all.

It does, however, work quite well. I found the dance to be quite exciting and dynamically filmed, and I appreciated how, minstrelsy aside, the depiction of the struggles of the immigrants and the racial prejudices puts the treatment of the same issues in most modern films to shame. The cops, after all, openly state their preference for the white gang (although there are occasional reminders that these kids are “merely” first-generation Americans, and shouldn’t take too much for granted). The fact that the white kids still fight shows that the generational gap is just as importance for them, but it also makes them more complicit in the tragedy that ensues because they don’t really need to fight, at least not as much.

Source: Warner widescreen VHS
11 January, 5:10 PM