#Anita west side story rita moreno movie#
#Anita west side story rita moreno full#

Ariana DeBose (center), who plays Anita, turns in the most astounding performance in West Side Story.

#Anita west side story rita moreno movie#

There are still some big issues here - the Sharks, as ever, are wildly underwritten compared to the Jets, and the equivalence the movie seems to draw between the two gangs feels more askew than ever given its increased understanding of the racial power dynamics at play - but this West Side Story is still able to go toe-to-toe with its predecessor. Cruel and unusual!īut damn, this new West Side Story more or less manages to make it all work. Imagine putting some poor young actor in the position of having to sincerely call his scene partner “buddy boy,” or trying to drag the film’s conception of Puerto Rican culture into the present day without stepping into a thousand racial land mines. Second of all, the original 1961 film is so dated that it seems like it should be untouchable.

Imagine putting some poor young actress in the position of having to live up to Rita Moreno twirling her frilly skirt through “America” as Anita! Cruel and unusual! But I’m wondering what you expected, and how the film matched up with that?Ĭonstance Grady: Remaking West Side Story has always felt to me like a wild act of hubris that should be impossible on two fronts.įirst of all, the original 1961 film is such a classic that it seems like it should be untouchable. (I saw the film at its premiere, held at Jazz at Lincoln Center, just a few blocks from the site in the film’s opening shots, which elicited a few nervous chuckles from the audience.)Īnd that was just the start. Kushner’s screenplay feels to me like exactly what this kind of “update” should be - fully rooted in the 1961 original, and yet unpacking themes, probing subtexts, digging into matters that the original glossed over.Īs a result, it feels a bit more raw and rooted in our world than the fantasy of the original film, or the stage musical on which it’s based, starting right from the beginning, which tells us that this isn’t just the west side of Manhattan it’s a neighborhood that’s being razed for one of Robert Moses’s “urban renewal” projects, this one to build Lincoln Center. My expectations were admittedly muted going in (did we really need a remake of such a canonical film?), but even if they hadn’t been, they’d have been exceeded.

#Anita west side story rita moreno full#

And even when they finally shot the film, the pandemic delayed it by a full year we were meant to see this movie last Christmas. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake has been in the works for so long (at least since 2014) that I’m sure I’m not the only person who figured it was more of a pipe dream than reality. 20th Century StudiosĪlissa Wilkinson: Well, it’s finally here. So how does the new version hold up? What do we make of the performances? And does West Side Story still have relevance today? Vox critics Constance Grady, Alex Abad-Santos, and Alissa Wilkinson sat down to hash it out - hopefully without a rumble. Anita is now played by the fantastic Ariana DeBose, with Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler in the lead roles of Tony and Maria. Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Anita in the 1961 film, returns as executive producer and in a new version of a familiar role. The original screenplay by Ernest Lehman was due for a bit of updating, so in this new version, frequent Spielberg collaborator and legendary playwright Tony Kushner (who, among other things, wrote Angels in America) took on the project, gently tweaking and sculpting what was there into something new.

It’s a tragic love story and the tale of two warring gangs. The original film - directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, with songs from the stage musical composed by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by a young Stephen Sondheim - is itself an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, set on the west side of Manhattan.

For his first attempt, he took on one of the most beloved and influential movie musicals of all time: West Side Story, which has its 60th birthday this year. Steven Spielberg has never directed a musical before now, but you can’t accuse him of aiming low.