Reviews

First off, I do not object to adaptations making even significant changes - or modernizing, per se. The question is how well are these done, and whether they illuminate the story.

For example, the 1995 Sense and Sensibility took great liberties with the text but illustrated the heart of the story so well that I believe it does Miss Austen better than she herself did.

Persuasion, a very fine little jewel of a novel, has been adapted to feature films twice before; the best was the first, 1995's entry starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. The 2007, Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones, wasn't bad, though I cannot believe in Penry-Jones as a necessarily weatherbeaten sailor. Not with his milky skin.

This new one, however, suffers from a miscast heroine (Dakota Johnson would be a better for for Elizabeth Bennett than for Anne Elliot), a stage director's maiden film effort (she may improve, but she cannot pace a film to save her life), a truly epically bad script (telling over and over, rather than showing), and modernizations and film fads which simply do not work.

Anne Elliott, whom the novel tells us is given no consequence in her home, who has every task and responsibility dumped on her and who meekly shoulders them, is here an idle alcoholic, it appears, guzzling from wine bottles as she lolls self-indulgently in her bath or on her bed. She has no occupation of any kind about her home, she is sarcastic, without propriety, even rude.

This woman bears not the slightest resemblence to anything Austen ever wrote.

The script makes it so clear so early that not only does Anne still love her once-rejected (unpon persuasion) sailor, Captain Wentworth, he's still besotted too, though his pride has been wounded, so many invented tetes-a-tete are manufactured, that the outcome has no suspense, any dramatic tension so long deflated as to leave the climax a limp balloon.

I could go on and on about this film's shortcomings. It provides so much material.

However, if you like romantic fluff, are not particular as to the actual artistic merit of a film, have no knowledge or understanding of Jane Austen's work, English society in the early 1800s, no ability to discern good dialogue or direction from awful, maybe this is yoru cup of tea.

So, in preparation for watching the new version, I revisited the original.

It's a musical which has been revived on Broadway more than once (I saw the first of these), for a reason, which is that it's a great show. A GREAT show. More a sort of hybrid of operetta with Americal musical, made into a new theatrical form. Libretto by Arthur Laurents, Music by Leonard Bernstein, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, choreography by Jerome Robbins. Source material: William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Has anything ever had a more august pedigree to live up to? But West Side Story does just that. Magical.

And the 1961 film is superb. The dubbing of the two leads, Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as Maria and Tony, respectively, is rarely a problem, since they mostly sing to each other, so there's no dissonance. It becomes a small issue when Maria sings with Rita Moreno's superb, Oscar-winning Anita, and we have to handwave that the two singers are actully in the same room having a shared experience, at least in part.

That is the only flaw I found. This evening's revisit had me in tears twice, including at the end. Natalie Wood's a great Maria, and a worthy Juliet figure.

The parallels with the original story are strong - beyond the obvious Romeo and Juliet of Tony and Maria, Tony's shopkeeper-employer Doc represents Friar Laurence, Antia is analogue for the Nurse, including the neat re-working of Romeo's friends mocking her en masse fairly early on into an actual assault on Anita by the Jets near the end, the splendid Bernardo of George Chakiris standing as a more sympathetic Prince-of-Cats Tybalt, Russ Tamblyn's Riff as a less-witty and less-ribald Mercutio - though the film makes sexual activity among youth quite apparent.

Bernardo and Anita are clearly lovers, and among the Jets I cannot persuade myself that the nickname "Anybody's" is meant to convey other than the obvious.

One thing the film got wonderfully right was the feel of urban claustrophobia.

Though the film judiciously and effectively expands the boundaries of a theatrical set, there are chain-link fences, brick walls everywhere. The sky's often obscured by overpasses. The Sharks and their ladies dance constrained by the boundaries of a tenement rooftop.

So many moments of freedom-within-constraint. Ah, youth in the city!

These young men, allowed to go about jobless, are seething with youthful male energy for which they've no productive outlet. It's telling that Tony, who's left gang life for a very modest employment, is manifestly much more COMFORTABLE in his skin than his erstwhile cronies and enemies, who lack direction. It's a very nice nuance.

When I was in junior high school, my BFF Jessica O'Connor and I had a great teacher, one Mr. Voorhies. Our first class, I think it was, he asked how many of us had seen the film Casablanca. Most of us, including me, raised hands.

Mr. Voorhies then said how much he envied those who still had that initial experience ahead of them.

For those of you who haven't seen the 1961 film of West Side Story, I feel similarly. But do put it on your bucket list. If you like great musicals, you won't regret it.

The Broadway musical was essentially created by a trio of Jewish New York (two by birth, one by adoption) geniuses - Jerome Robbins (ne Rabinowitz), Leonard Bernstein, and Steven Sondheim (who wanted to write the music as well as the lyrics, but settled for the latter - this would be his first Broadway credit, but not, of course, his last).

Robbins and Bernstein had together previously created On the Town, that other quintessentially New York musical, which show derived, in turn, from Robbin's ballet Fancy Free, which Robbins had set to Bernstein's music.

Which is a round about way of making the point that West Side Story is a New York story, conceived and created by New Yorkers.

And New York, the New York state of mind, precisely, is what's a little lacking in Steven Spielberg's remake.

Tony Kushner's new book has good dialogue, better, perhaps, than Ernest Lehman's adaptation of Arthur Laurent's original. But there's much too much of it, leading to songs being given shorter treatment. In the original, dialogue is minimal, the action carried by the songs and the dances, giving the film an almost-operetta feel, lacking in the remake.

And much of that dialogue is in service of creating a different world-feel. Bernardo is a rising boxer, most of the Puerto Ricans seem to have jobs. And Maria is the child who's been in America for years, Bernardo the newcomer. I cannot fathom the reason for this change, nor for making Maria a night-cleaner at Gimbels, rather than a seamstress.

In the original show, Bernardo has had his parents bring his sister to America to marry a fellow-Shark, one Chino.

In the remake, Bernardo refuses Shark membership to Chino, who is a promising student with a potential way out of "the life."

But their having jobs, prospects, undercuts part of the story - that young men, lacking a productive outlet for their energy, can all-too-easily find less productive outlets, such as violence.

It's opened up a lot - America is danced along the streets of the city, gathering a crowd in audience, blocking traffic. It's a nice number, of itself, but lacks, again, the New Yorkness of young energy constrained, penned in, so eloquently shown by the free dancing within the tight confines of a tenement rooftop.

And, surely the unfriendly police would break up so public a display as the remake gives us.

The film was shot in New York, and the cinematography is gorgeous. But it's a film made by mostly those who are more Southern California than New York, and they just don't get New York's particular flavor.

The songs are the songs, and they have lasted for a reason. It's a great show.

The new choreography, by Justin Peck, has a Robbins' flavor, but just so much as a very decent hamburger has a flavor of superb prime rib. It's quite good, but it isn't genius - and, unfortunately for Mr. Peck, everyone has seen the genius of Robbins' choreography. Robbins, indeed, directed the first Broadway revival, which I saw, keeping his original choreography - and that choregraphy, live, is even more impressive than it is on film.

Most of the performances are good, though Ansel Elgert's Tony makes Richard Beymer's look far better than it did before. Tony, here, has not simply chosen a job over gang life, he almost killed someone in a previous rumble, and has been in prison for a year, which leads him to change his ways.

Rachel Zegler, despite a resemblence to a younger, prettier, and far more sensible Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, is quite good as Maria, and sings beautifully. She and Ariana DeBose (also very good as Anita) have some nice interplay, and, since they both sing, one scene that had to be handwaved in the original film comes across more realistically here.

David Alvarez is an affecting Bernardo, but pales in comparison to Oscar-winner George Chakiris. (Well, wouldn't anyone? Swoon, sigh.)

Rita Moreno (I am both sentimentally glad and cynically skeptical about her inclusion). Perhaps they didn't feel able to better the perfectly lovely Doc of Ned Glass. So, we have Ms. Moreno as Valentina, Doc's widow, and someone who has first-hand experience of a "mixed" marriage. She's marvelous, of course.

Which leads to another point - the story changes undermine the Romeo and Juliet parallells, the musical extravaganzas distract from them, rather than reinforce.

The 1961 film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and won 10 of them - Best Picture, Supporting Actor and Actress, Direction, Cinematography (color), Art-Set Direction (color), Costume Design (color), Sound, Editing, Music-Scoring. Poor Ernest Lehman was the only non-winning nominee.

The 2021 film has been nominated for 7; Best Picture, Supporting Actress (DeBose's Anita), Direction, Cinematography, Sound, Production Design, and Costumes.

I would say that 11/7 is appropriate as representing respective scores. The 1961 film is great. The 2021 film is very good, but not up to the taut, tense, stylized original.