West Side Story opens on Thursday and I have tickets for it.
I am a fan of Broadway musicals and I enjoyed the first West Side Story from 1961. But I had a lot of problems with it and I thought it would be interesting to mention them and then report back on Friday. I loved the story, the music, the lyrics the dancing and Rita Moreno.
Casting: This was a movie about many things, including racism, and as the lyrics say in the song America,
“Life is all right in America,
If you're all-white in America”
So they by passed Hispanic actors and hired Natalie Wood, who was just not appropriate. Neither were the “white” actors hired to portray Puerto Ricans. It didn’t look right. The Racial themes were mostly eliminated here as they were in the movie of Bye Bye Birdie.
And Tony in the movie was very not exciting.
Language: Here street gangs spoke in “G” rated speech. “Gee Officer Krumpke, Krump you” is not what they would have said.
Finally, Tony kills Maria’s brother, Bernardo. And that is either ignored or forgotten by Marie by the end of the movie. I don’t know if that can ever be fixed in the movie.
Well, let’s see.
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