After a teaser trailer in April, the first full-length trailer premiered on 9/15, the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Good LORD, this looks good!
West Side Story is probably my favorite classic musical. I grew up listening to the cast album (my folks had all these 8-tracks of Broadway cast albums and played them in the car everywhere we went) and I knew the music before I ever knew the plot. I know some people are against the idea of another film version of WSS, but to my mind having more than one adaptation of a stage work is akin to seeing different stage productions of the same show…because every new director, cast, adapter has the potential to give us a new perspective on the material. (Just look at what a revelation the Sam Mendes revival of Cabaret was. For that matter, there was a new re-imagined WSS revival in 2020 that the pandemic shut down, and that unfortunately won’t be reopening.) Besides, if we were only allowed one adaptation per work, we wouldn’t have the color and sound versions of Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments, we wouldn’t have the Ingrid Bergman version of Gaslight, we wouldn’t have Bogart’s The Maltese Falcon, and the only Wizard of Oz movie we’d be left with would be that godawful 1925 silent version with its cringeworthy racial humor.
Spielberg has said that this isn’t a straight up remake of the 1961 film but a new adaptation of the stage show, and it seems, from the trailer, that there have been tweaks to the script thanks to screenwriter Tony Kushner. So far, I like what I hear. I like Maria’s lines about building a life and home for herself here. I REALLY like that she talks back to Bernardo and reminds him that she’s of age and gets a say in her own life. Overall, I’m in favor of the new embellishments to the script since they’ll make this more of its own entity–a complement to the 1961 movie, not a replacement for it.
I wonder if they’re going to keep the arranged-marriage-with-Chino angle, or just have Chino be a suitor without the implied arranged marriage? You know, “Chino’s interested in you, querida, and he’s a good man…give him a chance.” When I think about that subplot in the original, it does beg the question of why, if Maria’s parents are keen to arrange their children’s marriages, they were fine with Bernardo choosing his own partner.
For that matter, it does seem to be implied that Maria and Bernardo’s parents (and according to IMDB, this version gives them a surname…Vasquez) might not be in the picture in this version, given that Bernardo says this is “his” house. This might ratchet up the impact of the murder…Maria loses not just her beloved older brother, but the only father figure she has.
The cinematography looks PHENOMENAL, as does what we see of the choreography. And the arrangements of “Somewhere” and “Tonight” that show up in the trailers bode well for the score.
One thing that I hope this version will do is to make it clear that the events of the Prologue are taking place over several weeks or months. In the script, the Prologue is subtitled “The Months Before” and the stage directions bear this out. This is supposed to be an abstract representation, in music and dance, of the events of a few months, from the arrival of these first immigrants to the actual start of the story, from a few skirmishes to an all-out brawl.
According to the shooting script that comes with the 40th anniversary DVD, the 1961 movie was supposed to convey this by showing the gangs in different changes of clothes, and cutting from day to night to day again with each clash that breaks out. But for some reason they scrapped this, so it looks as if the entire conflict started and escalated in a single day. I hope Spielberg takes advantage of the medium and conveys what the writers intended.
And Rita Moreno looks great! She’s going to be playing a character named Valentina, who takes the role of Doc in the original version. (Apparently, she’s Doc’s widow.)
All in all…I can’t wait!