Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 129

West Side Story and Kennedy’s Camelot

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following narrative strategy in designing the production and shooting the film: “All
exteriors to be real locations or completely realistic sets. In this approach the picture
will be given a distinctly styled photographic and cinematic treatment throughout.
Within this overall style the dance numbers and songs will be given an additionally
strong theatrical treatment but they will be smoothly worked in and out of the basic
style so there is no jar. The approach here would be to have a quality that is based on
reality but which achieves a sense of being larger than life, of a not-quite-real world.”
(Robert Wise, "West Side Story: The Problems of Style,” Robert Wise Collection, Uni
versity of Southern California Cinema-Television Library, Los Angeles, California;
Ernest Lehman Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of
Texas, Austin, 21 January 1960, pp.1-2.)
9. The film’s keen effort to capitalize on topical youth-oriented ‘social problem’juvenile
delinquent crime and gangster film cycles resonated within this postwar-early 1960s
period. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it “sparkling and moving.”
Bosley Crowther, “Musical Advance: The West Side Story Expands on Screen,” New
York Times, October 22, 1961, Section 2, p.l. Daily Variety's September 27, 1961
review refers to the film as “a beautifully-mounted, impressive, emotion-ridden and
violent musical which, in its stark approach to a raging social problem and realism of
unfoldment, may set the pattern for future musical presentations... propounded against
the seething background of rival and bitterly-hating youthful Puerto Rican and Ameri
can gangs...makes for both a savage and tender admixture of romance and war-to-thedeath.” Referring to Robbins’ “breathtaking” choreography, “dancing numbers prob
ably are the most spectacular ever devised and lensed, blendin