West Side Story (1961) .

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#TBT so how about a #Throwback Movie? 😁

#WestSideStory (1961)

How do you solve a problem like the original West Side Story? How do you look at a 1961 film already fraught with its subject matter of fraught race relations, that itself falls prey to the fraught nature of race representation, through a 2021 lens when race relations and representation are still, uh, fraught?

No earthly idea.

All I can say is if you can acknowledge how the Sharks were represented on screen back then, and how, ya know, *ridiculous* it seems now, and still somehow acknowledge the incredible craft on display, well that's a start, no?

The *legendary* songs! That opening! That whole violence-as-dance choreography. Those #Technicolor sets, those costumes, that #70mm DP-ing, that editing, the directing, the acting…I mean, it's all pretty incredible.

For whatever reason Wise never gets talked about in the pantheon of American directors, but you only have to see the breadth of his career to see how great he was, especially given the stage/Studio System constraints he was operating under. 

And that cast: Glass, Smith, Oakes in *key* parts, Tamblyn as the "nicest" juvenile delinquent you've ever seen, the prickly Chakiris, and, of course, the force-of-nature Moreno who steals the whole dang thing! And not to forget Nixon, using her voice to let the star shine(kinda like #SinginInTheRain?…man, was my mind blown when my Freshman film TA went into that *whole* meta thing, but that's a TBT story for another day…😊)

What's sad about, ya know, the whole Sharks *thing*, is how subversive the film actually is, touching on *all* kinds of topics that were taboo at the time.

Moreno must've been on top of the world, this fiery performance, a win at the #Oscars, I'm sure Hollywood was able to see beyond its own fraught history and gave here the awesome career she deserved…🤨

Krup you H'wood, Krup you!

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Robert Wise Jerome Robbins Stephen Sondheim Leonard Bernstein Daniel L. Fapp Thomas Stanford Ernest Lehman Irene Sharaff Arthur Laurents Hal Prince Saul Bass 
Rita Moreno George Chakiris Russ Tamblyn Marni Nixon Natalie Wood Richard Beymer Ned Glass Tucker Smith Susan Oakes 
@mgmstudios



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