STEVEN SPIELBERG

AMERICAN STORYTELLER REIMAGINES CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

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ew York City developed into a metropolitan center as a result of immigrants settling into distinct neighborhoods based on their income level and ethnicity. Gang rivalry was to be expected with racial tensions fueled by poverty and the challenges of living in a big, complicated city far away from home.

West Side Story was originally a 1957 Broadway stage musical based on the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Hollywood remade the Broadway play into a film about love and hate among rival ethnic gangs. Natalie Wood stars in the 1962 Hollywood classic that received 11 Oscar nominations, including 10 Oscar wins.

New York has the Five Boroughs, but each community is then divided up into distinct neighborhoods such as Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen, Tribeca, Chinatown, the Five Points and Little Italy.

While the world looks at New York as an international city of global influence, New Yorkers experience the city on a much more personal level. West Side Story captures that intimate personal struggle that occurs when simultaneously celebrating living in the city and surviving the gritty reality of the city on the city streets.

Ultimately the story defines community in the context of America. And so no surprise here when out of all the projects remaining to do on his storyboard of Hollywood projects, director Steven Spielberg chose to direct a reimagined West Side Story (2021).

The musical has all the hallmarks of a Spielberg film such as character and story development and a clean but sophisticated narrative compelled forward with scenes that have been painted with creative camera direction.

The ensemble cast, starring Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, and David Alvarez, sing, dance and act as if they had been born Hollywood stars. The marque director then adds a stylized layer of aesthetics onto the choreography of Justin Peck and the music of Leonard Bernstein.

The language of movement is created on screen with the song and dance of the cast in step with the camera.

Spielberg ensures the camera does not slow down the film and instead seems to join the narrative by filming close to the characters as they move about the sound stages. Spielberg shows his true intentions with the use of this technique by painting, with lighting and camera angles, long tall shadows onto the characters 

Spielberg establishes the film as a musical and then tells the story more and more with dialogue and many poignant moments of love and redemption.

Cinematography Janusz Kaminski creates an almost broody tone with his development of bleeding colors within dark shadows and piercing light.

All the tools in the director’s toolbox are used to create an authentic stage set apart from the original 1962 film.

The 2021 film is a stylized production utilizing set design and historical props that bring to the surface a more didactic lesson of love and hate and redemption.

Spielberg was initially successful with the Hollywood blockbuster as a cultural dynamo during a time of disenchantment with superpower politics and the nihilistic propensity for humanity to destroy generations of progress through brutal, violent war.

Films like literature and art had lost real didactic meaning and became instead spectacle as much as art, hooked on the violence, suspense and paranoia of the era.

The film producer also required a financial return on the studio investments more so than the film adding meaning to the global intellectual discourse.

Italian cinema remained distinctly Italian, though. And French cinema remained distinctly French. World cinema is still different from the backlots in California and Hollywood North.

Spielberg achieved commercial success by entertaining an audience based on an understanding of the intrinsic qualities of humanity, but the movie mogul eventually created an enduring legacy by producing film art that was deeply personal as well as entertaining.

Schindler’s List (1993) has been iconic since the film’s release, not just because of the critical acclaim and commercial success, but because all of a sudden, a commercially successful director produced art that was self-reflective while also addressing the broader humanist issues of good and evil in such a way that resonated with a global audience. 

Spielberg brought his following in the blockbuster spectacle market to the biopic historical film genre, and the great director would do so again and again, every now and then.

Spielberg would soon thereafter revisit World War II, this time from the perspective of the Paris liberators in the film, Saving Private Ryan (1998), starring Tom Hanks as Captain Miller.

Captain Miller’s personality is gradually deconstructed from the commanding officer engaged in tactical decisions involving the lives of the soldiers on Omaha Beach to the Captain sacrificing a safe return home for the camaraderie of the soldiers under his command.

The film won five Oscars, including best director for Spielberg.

Spielberg’s deconstructive narrative technique has an overall sublime effect by at first introducing the moral dilemma and then gradually revealing the inner workings of the personality until the audience ‘gets it’. The director then allows everyone on a ride-along as the character’s inner emotions are applied to various situations.

Spielberg later adds to his collection of Americana with his portrait of United States Civil War President Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012), starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field. 

Spielberg shows how the personal charisma and fortitude of the United States President made him one of the greatest leaders in history, but also how the emancipation of the black slaves in the south was won for mixed motives evidenced in the use of the flawed back water system of representation in Washington DC.

America’s director also provided his unique perspective on the justice system with the science fiction film, Minority Report (2002) starring Tom Cruise. 

Spielberg then provided a take on international justice with Munich (2005) starring Eric Bana.

The historical need for Israel to repeatedly defend a national identity against terrorists filled with hate is explained in intricate detail in the biopic, Munich.

The camera’s attention to detail matches that of the Jewish assassination team, but the film gradually shows how the antiterrorist strategy has limited success partly due to human frailty, and also, partly due to betrayal and counter measures by the organizations supporting the terrorist targets.

Spielberg’s realism advances meaning, not just for America but for a more global hegemonic society, as he transitions from problem solving the American family to the intricate sophisticated nuances of world politics.

Movie themes transitioned from depicting the fragility of humanity, even within the shelter of the family, to portraying the inefficient, corrupt and often reckless governance within and without a democratic society.

Spielberg maintained the popularity of his films by replacing the unrealistic veneer over most blockbuster productions with the viewers presence on set through a deeper immersion into what the characters are experiencing in the narrative.

In West Side Story, the camera follows the cast members closely through the choreography, thereby allowing viewers a sense of motion and a deeper understanding of the language of movement, instead of the audience watching at a distance.

The audience becomes part of the musical, just as the audience frantically tries to escape with Indiana Jones from the giant bowling ball, and just as theatre goers are trapped inside the amusement park ride as the dinosaur stomps by on a rampage. 

And not a moment wasted. Scenes bleed seamlessly into scenes as if occurring in real time as the historical facts are made believable through a series of poignant, intimate moments.

Audiences are given an insider’s point of view and an opportunity to bond with those characters already inside, just as they would with family members, believing and becoming more believable the more understanding and trust that develops between them.

Spielberg’s trademark is the ability to make audiences feel the bonds of camaraderie as much as the terror that surrounds them, and to experience the love of siblings as much as the hate of a destroyer. These poignant, intimate moments also compel the narrative forward in West Side Story.

Spielberg initially emerged from a group of young independent filmmakers establishing careers apart from the studio system that had dominated Hollywood for decades. 

The big production companies controlled all aspects of the movies, including the development of talent and filling theatre seats.

The group of independent filmmakers shared a fanaticism for the art of making movies, with ideas about painting narratives and the profound significance of film art compelling them intellectually forward away from and apart from the studio system as much as possible.

The director throws humanity into the moral dilemma, often surviving, suffering and dying as a result of spiritual misfortune, systemic errors and individual recklessness.

Spielberg is ultimately an eternal pragmatist, believing in the survival of friends and family in a difficult world divided by good and evil forces that often operate blindly to the plight of humanity.

In this way, a stylized West Side Story fits in well with an iconic filmography.

Steven Spielberg’s America, by Frederick Wasser, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010. Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films, by Molly Haskell, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2017. Steven Spielberg, The Man, His Movies, and Their Meaning, by Philip M. Taylor, New York, The Continuum Publishing Company, 1992.