'West Side Story' Review: Spielberg Refines The Iconic Musical While Reminding Us Why We Fell In Love With Going To The Movies

Arlington TX

11 December, 2021

10:31 AM

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By Joe Friar, Fort Worth Report December 10, 2021 We all remember the film that made us fall in love with going to the movies. For 11-year-old me, it was "Jaws." That summer I purchased a ticket on 32 different occasions and thus began my romance with cinema. For many, it was the Bernstein-Sondheim driven musical "West Side Story" by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. On the 60th anniversary of the Oscar-winning film, Steven Spielberg, who is obviously still fascinated by sharks, reminds us why we fell in love with movies. He has taken the Broadway-adapted classic and refined it in truly spectacular fashion. The choreography is thrilling, the visuals striking, and the cast first-rate. The forbidden love story never looked so good. The film opens in 1957 amidst the concrete rubble of recently demolished tenements in New York's Upper West Side. At first glance, it appears that we've stepped into "Saving Private Ryan" as skeletal remnants of buildings tower above the debris. But the large steel wrecking ball looming over the San Juan Hill slum is an ominous indication of the urban renewal taking place to make way for Lincoln Center, displacing families and forcing rival gangs The Jets, made up of Irish, Polish, and Italian teenagers, and The Sharks, their Puerto Rican counterparts, to face the fact that the turf they have been fighting over is quickly vanishing. At a time when many filmmakers are turning to Black-and-White as a way to visually impact their films (Kenneth Branagh with "Belfast" and Mike Mills with "C'mon C'mon" are two recent examples), Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński remind us how dazzling color adds a third-dimension quality to a film, evident in the vibrant dance numbers choreographed by Justin Peck. Yellow and red skirts, blue shirts, a myriad of patterns and prints, jump off the screen as the dull and shadowy brownstones in the background provide a striking contrast. Daniel L. Fapp took home the Oscar for his cinematography work on the 1961 classic. His camera was a keen observer always centered on the action at hand while Kamiński is much more versatile with his photography. The camera flows and swirls, zooms in and out, energizing the moment at hand. The long-time Spielberg collaborator (they first worked together on "Schindler's List" in 1993) gives us the best lit film of the year. The outdoor scenes are vivid of course, but the dimly lit indoor and night scenes really stand out as Kamiński uses a fracture of light to perfectly illuminate an actor's face as in the basement of a pharmacy or on a fire escape, or to provide a nice contrast as light bleeds through the gymnasium bleachers that our star-crossed lovers have taken refuge behind. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.