America’s been called the great melting pot. But sometimes, that pot boils over.
So it is in the mid-’50s on New York’s toughest streets. Crumbling neighborhoods are making way, block by block, for gleaming new apartments. Traditional Irish conclaves are becoming multicultural communities. And the Jets don’t like that one bit.
Riff insists the lily-white Jets are more than a street gang: They’re a family. And when you become a Jet, you’re always a Jet—“from your first cigarette to your last dying day.” The Jets are determined to defend their turf ’til the last brick tenament takes a wrecking ball to the gut. And all the folks with black or brown skin moving in? Well, the Jets’ll see that their skin turns black and blue instead.
The neighborhoods’ burgeoning Puerto Rican population, though, aims to make a home on those same streets—and those immigrants aren’t about to be pushed around by a bunch of thuggish Irish delinquents. Puerto Rican youth have created a gang of their own, called the Sharks. And if the Jets push them, the Sharks will push back—and push hard.
The rival gangs are on a collision course, and both can’t wait for the crash. At a dance held at the local high school—a dance designed to foster a little peace and even friendship—Riff’s ready to drop the gauntlet. He calls a summit between the Jets’ leaders and the Sharks, challenging Bernardo and his crew to an all-out rumble. The winners will claim the streets, crumbling tho’ they may be. The losers best keep their heads low and swagger lower. And if a loser sees a winner strutting down the sidewalk, he best turn and walk the other way.
Bernardo agrees, and the two set the terms: a runble at the old salt warehouse. Bricks and chains, fine. No knives or guns (wink wink). Yeah, the gangs will bleed, and bleed plenty.
But at that same dance, across the gym, a boy sees a girl. The girl eyes him back. And slowly, the two edge across the floor and meet behind the bleachers.
The boy, Tony, has indeed been a Jet from his first cigarette. He and Riff formed the group, and during the gang’s last all-out rumble—against a group of Egyptians—Tony nearly beat another guy to death. That little incident got him sent to prison for a good long while, and gave him a chance to think for a good long time. He’s been wondering whether life might have bigger plans for him.
But when he meets this beautiful Puerto Rican girl, he wonders no more. He knows.
Maria is Bernardo’s kid sister—just 18 but already set up with Chino, a smart guy who fixes adding machines. But while Chino is nice and all, she’s not crazy about him. The gringo she’s eyeing now? He’s different.
But do an Irish bad boy and a Puerto Rican good girl have a chance in this crazy, mixed-up world?
Tony’s time in jail made him a better person—more aware of his own weaknesses and the dead-end direction his life was heading. When the movie opens, he’s severed most of his ties with the Jets, and he works honestly as a clerk for Valentina (an elderly woman who now runs her late husband’s drug store). And when Tony meets Maria, viewers get the sense that the whole trajectory of his life might change—where he’ll be living not just for himself, but for someone else, too. (That sense of commitment and devotion is echoed by both young lovers in the song “one hand, one heart,” where they pledge, and almost pray to “make of our lives one life.”)
Tony probably couldn’t have done as well for himself without Valentina, though. She gave him a job, a place to stay and offers some pretty cogent advice, too. And she, out of everyone, is willing to help Tony and Maria get a fresh start. (Her loyalty, it should be noted, arguably strays from purely positive territory, but you can’t question the grace she shows.) And honestly, you get the sense that if everyone in the neighborhood listened to Valentina, things might’ve gone much, much better.
We can’t praise most members of the Jets and Sharks much. But both serve as surrogate families of sorts. In the Jets’ case, that gang might be the only real family some of these guys have. We can’t completely dismiss the loyalty, camaraderie and brotherhood these gangs represent—even if those laudatory values get twisted in some terrible ways, as we’ll see.
One more flower to throw here: Anita, who’s Bernardo’s girlfriend, initially tries to help Maria and Tony—even though she knows what she’s being asked to do puts her in massive danger. That “help” goes badly awry, but the courage she shows initially should be praised.
On their first real “date,” Tony takes Maria to The Cloisters, a New York museum that Maria says feels like a church. The two spend time in a very church-like room—complete with stained glass and statues of angels—where Maria kneels before an altar and encourages Tony to kneel with her. The two engage in what amounts to a self-officiated wedding there—sanctifying their love in a surprisingly traditional way before God.
That’s the most explicitly religious moment in the musical. But West Side Story’s edges are tinged with spirituality throughout—from the cross hanging above Maria’s bed to faith-inflected dialogue (“I swear on all that’s holy!” Riff says at one point) to song lyrics. (Softly saying Maria’s name is “almost like praying,” according to Tony.) The Puerto Ricans we see seem firmly, if imperfectly, tied to the Catholic Church. Anita, for instance, attends mass—while singing a slightly scandalous song about what she and her boyfriend Bernardo will do later that evening. (She’s repeatedly shushed by her shawl-wearing friends.)
We’ll need to spend some time with the character Anybodys here.
Anybodys—a sort of Jet tagalong—has been a part of West Side Story since it first came to stage in 1957. Though some LGBTQ advocates have characterized her as one of the stage’s first transgender characters, she was merely characterized as a tomboy for most of West Side Story’s history—and one with a crush on Tony at that.
In this update of the original musical, Anybodys seems to push farther into official transgender territory. Played by Iris Menas, an actor classified as non-binary, Anybodys denies strongly that she’s a woman (even though one Jet says he’s peeked at Anybodys’ privates and can confirm otherwise), and the musical seems to stress Anybodys’ masculinity by having the character beat up a bunch of policemen.
But West Side Story also keeps intact lyrics from the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” which suggest that familial sexual fluidity (“My sister wears a mustache/My brother wears a dress”) is the reason for a character’s delinquency. (“Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!”)
Shortly after Tony and Maria sort of consecrate their relationship at that altar (emotionally, but not legally), the two sleep together. We see them briefly sitting up in bed, their shoulders (and in Tony’s case, part of his chest) exposed, but the rest covered by sheets. The couple kisses often.
Bernardo and Anita also smooch—often passionately—and sometimes make out as they close their bedroom door behind them. The two live together but aren’t married, though Bernardo expresses his wish that they were.
Characters wear outfits that can reveal quite a bit of cleavage and leg—but not much different from what we see in the 1961, G-rated movie.
West Side Story’s peppy song-and-dance numbers are offset by moments of startling violence.
Perhaps the most difficult moment takes place in Doc’s drug store. Anita comes into the shop, which is filled with Jets. She’s not allowed to leave, and the woman is pawed and grabbed and eventually pulled down on the floor—her body obscured by the gang members, clearly intent on sexually abusing her. Valentina walks in before, it seems, that intent is fully carried out. But Anita’s dress is torn, and Valentina accuses the woman’s attackers of being “rapists.”
The Jets and Sharks clash repeatedly—most notably during a rumble at a salt storage facility.
Though knives and guns weren’t on the rumble’s itinerary, they show up anyway. Two characters get into a knife fight, and both wind up dead. (One lives on for a bit, despite having the blade handle jutting from his chest.) Both corpses are later seen in a morgue.
Two people beat each other pretty horrifically during the rumble, too: One character—Tony, if you must know—refuses at first to fight, and his assailant hits him repeatedly in the head and stomach. But when Tony does start swinging punches, he’s vicious: His opponent’s face is a mass of blood and bruises before Tony realizes just how close he is to killing the guy and withdraws. (It’s an echo of the beatdown Tony administered years earlier—one described in some detail and which got Tony sent to jail.)
In another fight, one guy ends up with a nail in his ear. (The ear bleeds, naturally, and extracting the nail is clearly painful.)
A man shoots another twice in the back, killing him. Guns are pointed and played with. Lots of threats are issued. People beat up each other, and one ferociously attacks a handful of policemen.
We hear four s-words and a number of other profanities, including “a–,” “b–tard,” “crap,” “d–k,” “g-dd–n” and “h—.” Jesus’ name is abused five times. Also worth noting: The song “Gee, Officer Krupke” is punctuated by a clear f-word stand-in. We hear some racial and ethnic slurs as well.
Several characters smoke, and we see plenty of cigarettes onscreen. Characters drink, too, and one scene takes place in a seedy bar. In “Gee, Officer Krupke,” Jets complain that “Our mothers all are junkies/Our fathers all are drunks,” adding that “With all their marijuana/They won’t give me a puff.”
West Side Story is built on racial and ethnic tensions very much a part of New York in the 1950s. Though the characters’ biases are never lauded, they’re still quite obvious and, frankly, inescapable. The musical offers plenty of nods to police overreach, too, with Puerto Ricans telling officers that the police often take the side of the Jets. (In the movie, we can see they have a point.)
Both gangs are made up of disaffected youth, and the Jets seem particularly bent on terrorizing the neighborhood (especially anyone who doesn’t look like them). We see them rip down shop signs, vandalize a painting of a Puerto Rican flag and shoplift. Mothers snatch their kids off the sidewalks when they see the Jets approaching, and many adults scurry away, too.
West Side Story is an old story. Really old.
It’s based on Shakespeare’s classic tale of star-crossed lovers, Romeo & Juliet, replacing the warring Italian clans of the Montagues and Capulets with the Jets and Sharks. It was a massive hit on Broadway back in 1957, and it got even bigger when it moved to the screen in 1961. Featuring Rita Moreno, Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood (who didn’t sing a note), the first film version of West Side Story won 10 of the 11 Academy Awards it was nominated for and was the highest-grossing film of the year. The American Film Institute ranks it as the second-greatest musical ever made—just behind Singin’ in the Rain.
So why make another?
Director Steven Spielberg says that the soundtrack for West Side Story was “actually the first piece of popular music our family allowed into the home,” according to Vanity Fair. “I … fell completely in love with it as a kid.” He also told Yahoo that the musical—what with its issues of racial and ethnic strife, feels quite timely, “more relevant to today’s audience than perhaps it even was in 1957.”
But the end product is surprisingly—even refreshingly—traditional. It adheres closer to the original Broadway production than the 1961 film, and it feels, top to bottom, like an old-fashioned musical. People burst into song for no reason. Gang members twirl around each other as they grapple for a gun.
Like all musicals, it’s a little insane if you step out of the film’s conceit. But if you’re in it—and Spielberg makes it easy to slip into that vibe—it works. And as an extra treat, it features Rita Moreno, who arguably stole the show in the original 1961 film and (as a poignant Valentina) threatens to do so again here, 60 years later.
For all of that, West Side Story also dispels a longstanding notion that many of us have: that classic musicals are squeaky-clean relics of a more innocent age.
This new version doesn’t deviate much from the original West Side Story, and yet it contains violence, allusions to sex and loads of nods to drinking and smoking. And where it does deviate, it gets rougher. I don’t recall any s-words in the 1961 film. And while Anybodys was there, she wasn’t quite as aggressively transgender as the character is here.
All of that makes West Side Story a bit of a mixed bag. Did we need another? Steven Spielberg at least makes a case that we did. Do we need to see it? Well, that’s another side of the story.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
