I couldn't bring myself to see Rita Moreno's career-capping show at the Berkeley Rep. It would have been disloyal to Chita Rivera. You see, I just can't forgive Rita for playing Chita's part in the movie of West Side Story. Oh, I know it wasn't Rita's fault; the prima Puerto Rican in Hollywood, she was the obvious, perfect casting.
Yet I was �" am �" enamored of Chita, the greatest Broadway star of her generation. How could Hollywood not recognize such an incredible performer? So I wasn't buyin' Rita. I know that around the Bay Area, she's a goddess, but tant pis, I guess I'm just really good at harboring an unreasonable grudge. Truthfully, she's only a passable dancer �" her backup girls in "America" have it all over her. And she doesn't even do her own singing! How could an Oscar have been awarded for a role in which somebody else's vocal acting provided the key moments? Well, pace Rita fans, she's not Chita, but she's impressive throughout.
The Chita/Rita situation wasn't all that first kept me from fully enjoying WSS, despite the fact that the movie in many ways improves on the stage version. Some lyrics were bowdlerized as too adult for mass consumption. And the orchestrations are bloated, with the canned crooning of the dubbed stars not comparable to the full-out singing and soaring voices heard on Broadway. But the movie treats the score well. It's all there, for one thing; no songs were dropped, and a more fluent song order was devised.
The score itself? My friend Val Addams writes a fascinating blog in which he compares Hollywood film musicals to their Broadway originals (bway2hlwd.blogspot.com), and after assessing the music of WSS, he writes, "Okay, I'll say it: probably the greatest score ever written for a Broadway musical." That brought me up sharp, and I immediately started to name the one that was the very best. Though Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway, it was intended for the opera house. I couldn't name another contender, and had to agree with Val. Think about it.
And, oh, the thrill of it all. Those first, fleeting moves that launch us effortlessly, believably, into a heightened world where dance is the language spoken by the characters. The sets pretend to gritty realism while delivering a series of contained spaces that speak of caged lives. And they drip with red. Blood red. Like a Vincent Minnelli wet dream. Have you ever seen a gymnasium with blood red walls? The lighting design, too, is theatrically heightened, with follow spots and colored specials. Is there another movie so thoroughly and successfully stylized? And all to properly frame Jerome Robbins' masterwork choreography.
Sure, Richard Beymer's Tony lacks impact. But he's good. Natalie Wood's conception of acting seems to consist of never having to blink. But she, too, is very good. And the buttocks and baskets of the gang! Let us pause, in praise of jeans that fit. So we decide �" along with the rest of the world �" that the whole movie is pretty special. And now, celebrating its 50th Anniversary, Twentieth Century Home Entertainment has issued a Blu-ray mastering that's available in two versions: a slimmer, less expensive two-disc edition, and a deluxe four-disc version, which adds a CD of song covers by pop artists and a digitally restored, standard-def DVD of the movie. It's better than the Blu-ray in one small way: the actors look normal. The Puerto Ricans were slathered in Egyptian Number 9, which the incredible hi-def of Blu-ray renders as caked and cracked as parched desert. Perhaps it's the excess of pancake that inhibits Ms. Wood's eyelid motility.
That's minor, though, and the Blu-ray process is just the ultimate treatment for the blood-soaked scenery and the costumes' blazing colors. The set's got fab Special Features, too, like Stephen Sondheim's song-by-song commentary, and the commentary on the dances offered by a raft of Tony-winning choreographers and WSS cast members �" including Chita (and not Rita). There's a brand-new documentary to accompany the one made for an earlier DVD edition, and other goodies, too (although it's a cheat that the shooting script that came with a previous DVD issue isn't included.)
One last thing afforded by a revisit to WSS . Hindsight. Anybodys, the girl who wants to join the gang, would have been called a tomboy back in the day. But she's clearly a future F2M.