West Side Story: The Best 'Best Picture' Of The Sixties

02/12/2024

Kyla Charles explains why the multiple Oscar-winning musical is by far the best

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Image by IMDb

By Kyla Charles

As Nouse reaches 60 years of age, I have been thinking about where it all started: the 1960s. For me, the ‘swinging’ 60s is a time where cinema began to reach a point of beauty, where technicolour ruled the silver screens, and where music and dance exploded from the film reels. In my opinion, cinema in the 60s can be defined by one singular film, the film I regard to be the best ‘Best Picture’ of the age: West Side Story (1961).

The 1961 film won ten Oscars out of it’s 11 nominations, including the prestigious ‘Best Picture’ award, beating Fanny (directed by Joshua Logan), The Guns of Navarone (directed by J.Lee Thompson), The Hustler (directed by Robert Rossen) and, Judgement at Nuremberg’ (directed by Stanley Kramer). Currently, it holds the record for the most awarded musical in history but what do these accolades really mean? At the end of the day, awards are just trophies decided by a panel of film snobs. Yet, West Side Story is a piece of cinema which supersedes awards season. Nowadays we see films acting as ‘Oscars bait’, those marathon biopics on 35mm film designed to merely win awards and not the heart of the audiences which fill the cinemas and fund projects. The prestige of the Oscars may have been eroded in recent years, but West Side Story won a place in our hearts and the history books as a film of multicultural joy and, arguably, it remains one of the most iconic musicals to date.

As an adaptation of an adaptation, the film had to change form twice just to be made. The version of the plot used for the film came from the 1957 Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim of the same name. However, the story really begins in 16th century London rather than 1950s New York, as the source material is based on Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. It seems such a feat that a film stemming from such a long line of historical versions can be so successful with the audience for which it was produced in 1961.

Although the film is technically set in the late 1950s with a post-Eisenhower American political backdrop, when flushed with Kennedy’s optimism, it seems the perfect place for this film to reside. It is a film which is distinctly pre-Vietnam – or pre-escalation at least – as it holds within it a sense of joy which cannot be replicated in the Johnson years. Yet, it still has the melancholy tragicness that a film adapted from Romeo and Juliet can be expected to have.

A key element of the film is the use of music and dance. It is a staple of the musical genre, with one of boasting cinema’s most notable soundtracks devised by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. The style of dance relies on fiery choreography and staccato extensions (orchestrated by choreographer Jerome Robbins, who also directed the dance scenes) to display dramatic action. There is some comedy in the premise of a gang war portrayed through the medium of dance but somehow it works, and it serves as a beautiful expression of what it meant to be young in the 1960s.

Perhaps, the most poignant question that the film poses is of what it means to be American, a question that prevails even today, especially in an election year. Even for international viewers (such as myself in the United Kingdom), there are key takeaways about what national identity is. Off of the back of the racism riots in the summer, as well as the period of political change that the General Election brought about in the United Kingdom this year, the question of what national identity means has become a major talking point. The Afro-Latin musical number ‘America’ (performed by Rita Moreno and George Chakiris) is recognised as an iconic piece of film music due to both its excellent performance and its political charge. West Side Story is a musical which does not avoid tough questions and for that it will always be remembered.

So, when looking back at 1960s cinema, West Side Story will always be the first film that comes to my mind. Modern adaptations (see the 2021 Steven Spielberg version starring Rachel Zegler and Ansel Elgot) are notable and make a noble effort at capturing the magic of the original but, I believe, still fall short. West Side Story will always be to me the ‘best’ of the Best Pictures.