We Really Have to Show This One...

Our current series (as you probably know by now) has been showcasing films that are re-workings of classic works of literature and drama. Some of these films have been very well-known (Forbidden Planet; O Brother, Where Art Thou?); some, possibly less so (In the Bleak Midwinter; All Night Long). 

There is one film, however, which almost inevitably must be included in a series like this. If we are really going to explore films that take classic stories and translate them into completely new contexts and environments, then we can't really let the series conclude without showing Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now - which takes Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and transports it to the Vietnam War.



I'm just kidding.

I have no plans to show Apocalypse Now. I have no plans to show Apocalypse Ever. Yes, it's based on Heart of Darkness, but... it's truly awful.

No, the film I do mean is of course West Side Story. 



As is very well documented by now, West Side Story takes Romeo and Juliet and transports it (them?) into mid-20th Century New York, with a little help from Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins.



West Side Story was hardly the only attempt to modernise Shakespeare (we've shown enough movies in this season to prove that point). It wasn't even the first Broadway musical adapted from Shakespeare (Kiss Me Kate, anyone?) but it does tend to stand apart from other Broadway productions - in large part due to Bernstein and Robbins.




The first collaboration between Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein wasn't a musical at all; it was a ballet (Fancy Free) which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1944, and was a fitting beginning for a partnership between two immensely talented artists who moved easily between the worlds of "popular" music and "serious" concert music (long-haired, to use the term of the era).



Jerome Robbins worked as the associate Artistic Director of the New York City Ballet (founded by Balanchine) and Bernstein was... well, he was Bernstein. 


It has always been very difficult to put a label on someone who was variously (often simultaneously) the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, a prodigious composer; teacher (this was a man who could have 5-year-old kids on the edge of their seats listening to his explanations of 12-tone music) and (by the way) the creator of numerous Broadway smash hits; including of course, West Side Story.

Jerome Robbins had originally approached Bernstein with the idea of an updated Romeo and Juliet set in Manhattan's Lower East Side (it was called East Side Story at this stage) and dealing with the rivalry between a Jewish family and a Roman Catholic family. Bernstein's initial impulse was to write it as an opera, and the project went through many iterations over several years before everyone involved settled on its final form, and it opened as a very ambitious, very operatic stage production on Broadway.

The 1961 film, which was co-directed by Robbins and veteran film-maker Robert Wise, faithfully captures the revolutionary music and dancing of the stage production, but opens it up in a uniquely cinematic way. 


West Side Story is true Musical Theatre.

We will be screening West Side Story (the 1961 film adaptation, despite the recent availability of certain ersatz alternatives) at 7.30 on Thursday, the 5th of May at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.



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