The new version, partly shot in Paterson and Newark, and actually incorporating the building of Lincoln Center into the plot, is more airy and open.
The 1961 version - shot on location in west side tenements, soon to be demolished to build Lincoln Center - had a dark, claustrophobic feel.
The original dialogue, pretty awful in spots ("cut the frabbajabba!"), is greatly improved by screenwriter Tony Kushner - even if his teen gang-bangers do sound at times like sociologists, walking us through the racial and economic changes in their city. The choreography of Justin Peck, mostly dazzling, falls short on a couple of occasions - "Cool," a high point of the 1961 film, is a disappointment here - but there are also none of those embarrassing moments in the old film where the gang members pirouette like ballerinas before sticking their knives into someone. In general, Spielberg has done a better job of integrating the naturalistic world of the city streets with the stylized world of dance. I wonder what my mother, who died last year, would have thought of Steven Spielberg's new version of "West Side Story," which opened this past weekend - after several years of anticipation - to excellent reviews and pretty dismal box office numbers ($10.5 million). The feeling of onrushing, tragic destiny was overwhelming, my mother said. The much-lauded 1961 film version, which won 10 Oscars, never came near it, for her. It was a moment late in the first act, when the two street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, sing contrapuntally about how they are going to prevail in the coming rumble, while Tony and Maria sing about their newfound love, and Anita sings about the romantic evening ahead. It was not the song "Somewhere," or the shock of the knife fight. And the moment she really remembered - the moment that made her cry - was not the tragic finale, where the hero Tony lies dead in the city streets, victim of gang violence. In later years, she talked about how she had never seen anything like it.
It certainly made an impression on my mother.
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