#51 ‘West Side Story’ (1961)

Jazz Hands, Knife Fights, and the Musical Myth of Mutual Destruction

West Side Story (1961) is the film that dared to ask: what if Romeo and Juliet danced, snapped, and racially profiled each other to a Leonard Bernstein score? It’s a Technicolor fever dream of doomed love, flying fists, and cultural cringe—a movie that tries to sell gang warfare as ballet and prejudice as plot device, all while brownface blazes across the screen like a spray tan apocalypse.

Set in a stylized New York City where teenage boys settle turf wars with pliés and pirouettes, the film follows the Jets (white, angry, emotionally stunted) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican, passionate, and played by approximately two actual Latinos). These rival gangs fight over territory they neither own nor understand, but really, they’re just foils for the tragic romance between Tony (Richard Beymer, charisma of a damp sponge) and Maria (Natalie Wood, buried under an accent and more eyeliner than a drag queen on opening night).

Maria is innocence incarnate. She sings, she prays, she smiles like she’s never had a thought she didn’t ask permission for. Meanwhile, Tony is the reformed bad boy who now works at a drugstore and dreams of a better life—specifically, one where Maria stands quietly beside him while he monologues about feelings. Their chemistry is tepid, their relationship rushed, and yet we’re supposed to believe they’ve transcended centuries of racial tension with a single duet on a fire escape.

But the real star of West Side Story is Rita Moreno as Anita—sassy, sultry, and the only character with fire in her blood and complexity in her arc. She dances with rage, sings with defiance, and delivers the film’s only emotional gut punch. And for this, she’s assaulted, silenced, and pushed to the sidelines. Because in this world, passion from a woman of color is dangerous unless it ends in tears and character growth for white men.

Let’s also talk about the film’s casual colonialism. The Sharks are painted as “other” in every frame—exotic, loud, uncivilized—despite the fact that they’re just trying to exist in a city that treats them like pests. The Jets, meanwhile, are given backstories, trauma, and redemption arcs, even as they harass, attack, and—let’s be clear—attempt rape. But they’re white, so the film frames them as troubled, not dangerous.

And then there's the music—glorious, complicated, symphonic. Bernstein and Sondheim elevate every scene with wit and heartbreak. But no matter how lush the score, it can’t mask the fact that this story wants to be a tragedy about hate, but ends up being a tragedy about how women of color are always left to mourn the mess men make.

3 out of 5 snapped fingers
(One for Moreno’s rage-dance. One for “America,” the only song with teeth. One for the choreography, which somehow makes rage lyrical. The missing stars? Lost somewhere between the brownface, the white saviorism, and the idea that love conquers all—as long as the woman stays silent and the man dies first.)