A Revived West Side Story

Yesterday we went to see the new West Side Story movie, a Stephen Spielberg extravaganza. It turned out to be very good. The reviews were mixed, but once I watched the film, it became clear to me that most of the skeptics had agendas. I should begin by noting that I hadn't been a huge admirer of the 1961 Richard Beymer-Natalie Wood movie, for which George Chakiris and Rita Moreno won Best Supporting Actor and Actress Oscars. This was in part because I saw the show, in 1957: it was my first Broadway musical.

Suffice it to say that I have always loved the show. After all, the duo of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, the latter writing his first Broadway lyrics, was a dream team. And then bring in the amazing Jerome Robbins to make it a major dance show. Carol Lawrence, the original Maria, was a star for a time, but the only performer in the show who went on to have a long-lasting and major Broadway career is Chita Rivera, now in her 80s. Larry Kert, who played Tony, had one more big show--Company--and remained the answer to a quiz question.

I thought of Chita Rivera because "America" remains the huge brassy production number of the show and Ariana DeBose was a terrific Anita. The song features the best dancing that takes place on a huge public street space. The dancing in the rest of the pic is also excellent and exciting, in the way the show was. Both leads--Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler--have good voices, not that one ever minded Natalie Wood's being dubbed. The one performer from 1961 who was better than anyone else in his role as Riff, the Jets leader, was the late Russ Tamblyn, hired, I learned recently, for the movie because he could do a back flip.

What makes this production different is how Spielberg takes advantage of not only "opening up" the show but really maximizing what the film medium can do. The shots focusing in and out of scenes as well as the great sets and locations--it looked from the credits that many street shots were done in Newark and Paterson, N.J.--provide the backdrop for the action and the dancing.

Rita Moreno was involved in this movie in major ways: the part of Doc, who has the drugstore and candy shot and soda fountain where the Jets hang out, was changed to Valentina, his widow, who runs the joint now.  Her acting and her singing--this time she gets to sing "Sometime, Somewhere" in a soft voice, and it worked. Of course, at 90, she's not in a position to lead "America" as she did in the 1961 movie. But now she's listed as the lead executive producer as well.

Much has been made by critics of the casting, which features Puerto Rican and Hispanic actors as the Sharks and their girls. I don't think in the '50s and '60s we were aware that many white actors played these roles in "brownface". Certainly a good improvement and in today's milieu, doubtless a mandated one. However, the plentiful use of Spanish, while realistic,  could have benefited from subtitles as the picture is presumably intended for a general audience in the U.S. 

The writers and others who participated in a New York Times panel discussion of the film lauded the use of Spanish without subtitles. To me, that just shows how out of touch the "woke" New York cultural world is with the real world, and they probably don't care if it turns off the mass of Americans who don't speak Spanish.

A major accomplishment of the film is the re-imagining by Garrett Peck of the choreography originally created by Jerome Robbins. The Robbins name appears in the credits with the others responsible for the original show--Bernstein, Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents, the stage veteran who did the book. Robbins and now his estate demanded that every production of West Side Story contain the "entire production created, directed, and choreographed by"...him. Appearing in that one spot was perfectly done. Peck's work was superb, definitely equal to Robbins's original: accepting the dance medium for the gangs remains a leap of comprehension for viewers, but it comes off as natural, or as natural as it can seem.

When interviewed when the film opened, Sondheim, who at that date was the sole survivor of the original four creators, hardly surprising since he was so much younger and it was his first show--he died about a month ago, aged 93--said that he now thought "I Feel Pretty" was the one song he didn't feel fit. Its placement in the film appeared entirely right to me.

All in all, the new West Side Story comes off as an excellent rendition of the piece. My usual skepticism of any remake proved totally unjustified in this instance. Conceptions of what movies can be has grown and deepened in the 60-plus years since the old movie was shot, not to mention the show. I felt that this movie has more in common with the original Broadway production, which brought many innovations to the stage: a musical with a tragic ending, for one thing, and a musical about gang violence, albeit based on the timeless Romeo and Juliet.

 

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New Year--New Program

It's a new year, 2022,  and as I look outside, the first snowfall is in progress this Monday morning. They called off school and closed the government; this time, the precautions are likely to be justified. Even accounting for how nuts Washington gets with a dusting of snow, a likely 4-6 inches is major. It was warm right through the end of last year. Now I suppose it may not be.

Life was just starting to "normalize" (in quotes because it's hard to say what that means any more) when suddenly the pandemic got new energy. Everything was canceled and making plans was postponed. Staying inside means watching way too much tedious television. We start to watch some streaming series that someone has recommended and usually, it's fair and that means that after two episodes, we've had it.

More reading becomes a refuge. The new Churchill book by Geoffrey Wheatcroft provides a judicious corrective to the hagiography that developed especially in the U.S. The Andrew Roberts biography was good but mostly passed over the many low points, actually decades, of his life. Wheatcroft, in contrast, agrees that he shone during the five World War II years, even with many problematic acts. He was the man of the hour and deserved the acclaim. Most of the rest of his career before and after was far less successful. He did oppose appeasement and predicted the disasters of British foreign policy in the 1930's, but had little impact.

The rest were often disastrous, although one of his surprising defenders about Gallipoli was an officer who was in uniform there, Clement Attlee, who defeated Churchill in the 1945 election that showed that the British public knew that a different leader was needed in peacetime. 

Churchill was an unabashed imperialist, racist according to the standard outlook of the British upper classes, and tone-deaf to horrors like the killer London fog. His second stretch as Prime Minister in the early 1950's was undistinguished. 

It's when he is put up against the prewar Tory powers like Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, appeasers at best, that he comes off as a roaring success. Boothby and especially Beaverbrook became real war assets, but Attlee's cabinet--Bevan and Bevin, Morrison, and many others--were able to bring real change to the hidebound institutions of the U.K. Only a true right-wing revolutionary, Thatcher, could undo a great deal of the reform.

Churchill was always able to write--he admitted that he would make sure the world knew of his accomplishments during World War II because he would write the history, and he did just that.  In contrast to his World War II six-volume set, he  did better with his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. It is out of fashion today, largely because any work with that title offends too many and omits too much, but there's much good in it, told entertainingly.

Many of his quirks that seemed positive then--the huge cigars and the booze--seem less impressive today. He was far from a good parent--several of his children led sad, disastrous lives. 

Yet the oratory, which to me still works, and although it might not be effective today, was just what was needed then. He understood that there was no way to negotiate with Nazi Germany, especially from a position of weakness. He also realized early on that he would take advantage of his partially American parentage to build a good working relationship with FDR, who also grasped that despite their many differences, was the right man for the time.