West Side Spielberg's Story

[Ben]

But it’s new and shiny…?

[Randall]

Saw it!

At the start, my wife (who loves the Wise film) shared the oft-repeated "Why did they have to remake this?" I've only seen the Wise version once myself, and barely remember it, so it was easier for me to forget about it.

About a third of the way in, she said she had stopped trying to compare it to the original. The new one is just so good on its own. With a more authentic cast and more reality-based sets, it's really its own thing. And while comparing is fun, there's no need for it while the film is running. Spielberg's film isn't based on the Wise version, it's based on the original Broadway show, tweaked for a modern audience and brought to the "real" city, though still a period piece.

It still didn't "need" to be made, of course, but how many films do? Spielberg loves the show, and this is his best effort at bringing it to a modern audience. I think he succeeded well, in terms of how it turned out. Hopefully it finds more appreciation at home (via streaming and disc), after underperforming in the theatre.

The performers are uniformly good, with a few great ones. Zegler (Maria) and DeBose (Anita) were the strongest cast members, along with the returning Rita Moreno (who is now 90!). Aside from Moreno's character (now the wife of a deceased Doc), the biggest change is with Anybodys, who is now specifically a trans man rather than a tomboy. While it does feel a little shoehorned, the subtext was there all along, and his character arc is actually improved (though not just because of the trans identity).

Though my memory of Wise's film is sparse, I do recall feeling it felt artificial. It was stagey, which is okay. But the Puerto Rican characters - played mostly by non-Latinos - wore ridiculous brownface; even poor Rita Moreno, who is actually Puerto Rican. Spielberg's film is so much more authentic/real, and I have to say I like it better.

I could joke that I was disappointed that they kept the tragic ending, but of course that's the whole point to the story. By the end of the film, both my wife and I were in tears, so Spielberg certainly did his job. It's a great movie.

[Ben]

While, with the greatest of absolute and genuine respect, I can’t take anyone's appraisal of the new version seriously if they do not have a very good grasp of the original film (which all the creators were involved with!), it is good to hear that it works for new audiences, and I have been genuinely excited to see this since it was announced and am hoping for it to work well alongside Wise's original if not totally supplant it.

We were due to watch at the weekend until something else popped up; the plan is to invite a few peeps around and run it tonight, tonight…

[Ben]

Oh dear…

My brain is still fuzzy from the WTF experience of this movie. So many failed moments. So much talk and backstory in a musical that forgot it was a musical for its first half hour. So many times songs were rushed or cut to pack more backstory in. And, sorry, but El Spielbergo cannot direct music. His sense of camera movement and editing totally left him on this, and he frantically spun things around to try and cover it over, making this a perfect entry into WSS for ADHD kids, or at least those that would put up with the slower than modern songs.

Musicals are artifice. This film also suffers from wanting to make everything "real", but you can’t do that when everyone sings and dances, which is where the original handled that balance excellently. Whatever we may now apparently want to say about the casting, it was what it was back then, and this didn’t really do anything to cover up that although they may have been more "authentic", they can’t hold a candle to those in the original, with several dodgy singing performances and a handful of surprisingly bum notes.

Still lots to process, but I went in with low expectations and a real want to enjoy it — so was by absolutely no means ready, willing and waiting to bash it — and still came out very disappointed. It was just very underpowered, weirdly hyper in places, and had characters doing strangely hypocritical things. It just had no *fun* to it, either, with largely drab costumes, and lack of real characters in the casting. I say bring back that artifice, which blended the fact this was a stage show but made for a much more cohesive movie musical.

As for thinking it was "better" than Wise's version (again, made with the original creators on board), then Rand…you need to sit yourselves down in front of the original film again double-quick pronto and see how it should be done!

[Randall]

Surprise, surprise,... Mr. "Wise" Guy prefers Bob's version by a mile.

We like what we like. I was not a big fan of the Wise version, and the new one connected with me more. I appreciated the more grounded approach in this case. (Not that that's always a good thing - I certainly didn't think that the film version of Les Mis came off too well.)

I chuckle at how you prefer the singing in the original, saying the new cast can't do as well. Um... the leads in the old cast were largely dubbed, weren't they? The singing in the new one isn't all great (Tony could have been better, for sure), but much of it is; and I do like that it's the actual actors doing the singing. Also, I never did buy LA-born Russ Tamblyn as a NYC street tough, nor Natalie Wood as a Latina princess; but in the new film, those characters felt real to me.

Now, I never said that Spielberg's version was "better." Wise's film has lots of its own artistry and great choreography, of course. But I do like the new one better. I guess you disagree with the 7 Oscar noms, too, including for cinematography, which you didn't care for. That's fine. And yeah, I know that Bob's film had more noms, all well-deserved. I think they're both good, but I like the new one more.

Anyone else see it yet?

[EricJ]

I guess you disagree with the 7 Oscar noms, too, including for cinematography, which you didn't care for.

In a pandemic year where half the movies premiered on Amazon, I disagree with a LOT of Oscar noms, thank you.

[Farerb]

I disagree with Spielberg inclusion in the Best Director category and Denis Villeneuve should have been nominated in my opinion.

[ShyViolet]

https://youtu.be/18pNvg3ckdU


This is pretty cool!


OK I know this is coming extremely late, so I’ll be brief: Ben pretty much summarized everything I think about this film. (Especially the lack of joy.). That’s why it took me so long to write this…I didn’t quite know how to express my disappointment.

The acting was fine, but none of the actors made much of an impression on me (except for Riff’s performer, the only one in this film that is somehow able to rise slightly above the drabness of everything.)

I honestly don’t know what in the world Spielberg was thinking. Oh well, at least I do have high hopes for Fabelmans.

[Ben]

I’m sorry you found WSS as drab as I did Vi. It certainly won’t be as well remembered in fifty years time as the original still is today.

[ShyViolet]

“America” number; 1961 vs. 2021.


https://youtu.be/h9CHFl5HdRI

[Ben]

Y'know, most interesting here is that the tempos are so close. I mean, it’s obviously written to time, but one would expect more variation between them. That’s pretty impressive. Opening shot aside, this was probably the sequence in the new one I liked most — not quite more — but most, simply from opening it up more. But in doing that you also lose the intimacy of the two sides' arguments in the conversation over America, and although Spielberg obviously has an eye for shots and is able to do more with 21st century tech than Wise could with big and bulky 60s cameras, more is not always more, and he gets over excited, moving the camera n a way that is not in time or even rhythm with the music. Said it before and said it again, but he is just not gifted in any musical sense as he so obviously is elsewhere, and much of his WSS's lackluster tone is down to this.

Yes, his film may, like Chicago, open it up more as a film, in places, but the Wise film is a quasi version between this approach and keeping a foot in the stage origins, which may also have been a budget thing, since his next film, Sound Of Music, *definitely* does the same thing — in fact arguably pioneered it — and opens things out into film with real locations.

I also wish this sequence, in the new one, had kept its evening/twilight timing. You could have had everyone closing up shop and trying to get home being bothered by the singing and dancing, and the lighting would have made it look even more amazing and the colors pop even more. I did like the way Kamiński lit a few of the outdoor scenes, going with his heightened War Horse style of flooding real locations with lights on light — this, I assume, still try and keep that stage connection going, although it doesn’t quite work in that way as it "just" increases contrast and color intensity, which is still beautiful to look at. No wonder many of the stills used images from this sequence for promotion, as it’s definitely the highlight in many ways.

[Farerb]

I thought Spielberg's WSS was one of the more overrated films recently, not that it's bad but it really didn't deserve the praise that it got, and I'm getting the feeling that if it was another director, no one would have cared.

The original America number was part of a conversation. The characters talked and it naturally turned into music and then a song that continues the conversation. In Spielberg's version, the movie just stops to have a song. The original movie was a musical through and through - the segueway from conversation to song, the orchestration, the chorography. Spielberg's version is just a movie with songs in it.

[ShyViolet]

The Jet song from Spielberg’s version, one of the few scenes I genuinely enjoy, mostly because Mike Faist was sensational. (Cutting his character from: “Gee, Officer Krupky” was an incredibly dumb move.).

The dancing seemed a bit more natural too.

https://youtu.be/yQSikOX7whs

Here’s the ‘61 version just for comparison, which is of course phenomenal:

https://youtu.be/c9z33lasnkU

[Ben]

Faist was one of the new film's saving graces, but he can’t match Tamblyn's energy here, and Wise/Robbins' direction on that see-saw shot is stark and incredible. Having the Jets on their own turf in the playground keeps them the "kings" they want to be, but putting them out in the streets in the new one diminishes them as they become smaller than their surroundings, however bullish they think they are. The old one ends with them taking that bravado out into the streets, where you know their anger is going to lead up to something big and dangerous, but crucially we don’t see that yet. The new just uses the cliche of pulling the camera back on a big last note to find them…in a junk yard. Yeah, they’re top of that hill, and what they "own" is ironically worth diddly squat and all of that symbolism. But it’s still just a junk yard. They’re not heading out to take on and conquer all of New York…

[ShyViolet]

Yeah…Tambyn did such a marvelous job. He definitely contributed to the raw emotional yet “larger-than-life” feel of the musical numbers and the film in general. The fact that he was the third most important character in the film makes it even more ridiculous that 2021 cut Riff from “Gee, Officer Krupky.”

(2021)

https://youtu.be/UwrfS54yhk4

It also made no sense to have the song start out slow….these are angry young men, why would they sound so patient?? “Officer Krupky, we’re very upset…”. You don’t sound it…


(1961)

https://youtu.be/j7TT4jnnWys