Image: The verdict on Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of West Side Story is still out. Is it faithful to the original? Is the original better? Should it have been more radically reimagined? Should it have been remade at all? These debates do at least tell us something about what, in our moment, constitutes the controversial and what passes as unremarkable. If we can illuminate that, then a discussion of the film is worth the trouble, even if the film itself is not. For those unfamiliar, West Side Story is a musical about the ill-fated romance between a Puerto Rican girl (Maria) and an Irish-Pole boy (Tony)—a rendition, that is, of Romeo and Juliet set in 1950s New York. Written by Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins, it was originally a musical staged on Broadway in 1957, winning two Tonys a year later. The 1961 film version, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, won ten Oscars (including Best Picture) and is one the highest-grossing musicals of all time, an American classic whose songs (“America,” “Tonight,” “Somewhere,” “I Feel Pretty,” etc.) and dance sequences have been reproduced on countless high school theater stages and in sitcoms, movies, and music videos. Read More: Full Article
