#51 West Side Story (1961)

All my life I wanted to be a gangster, but lacked rhythm.

Plot summary (with spoilers): The Jets don't like the Sharks.  The Sharks don't like the Jets. They fight, as men do.  Snap, snap!  Dance, dance, dance!  Kick and...twirl!  

When you're a Jet/you're a Jet all the way/from your first cigarette/to your last dying day!

There's lots of back and forth. Jets makes kissy noises at the Sharks.  Sharks throw rotten fruit at Jets. Jets add the word "STINK" underneath a graffiti sign saying "SHARKS". Will the cycle of violence never end?!

Finally, some Sharks corner Baby John (the lil'est Jet) and start beating on him. An all-out brawl starts up, but Police Lt Schrank and office Krupke appear and break it up. Schrank doesn't like these crazy kids today and makes the Sharks leave the neighborhood and go back to their own kind. (The Sharks are Puerto Rican). After he leaves, the Jets decide they need a final rumble with The Sharks to decide once and for all who rules the neighborhood.  

The Jets leader Riff goes to see his friend Tony to try to get Tony to come to the school dance tonight and tell the Sharks about their plan for a final rumble. Tony's left the gang, and is trying to go straight, working at Doc's drug store, stacking crates and applying himself. But Riff begs him to come to the dance with him for appearances sake or something, and Tony relents. Riff closes with, "who knows, something great will happen tonight" and cues Tony to sing a ballad about something potentially great happening tonight. It's boring. Moving on.

Prior to the dance, we meet the Sharks leader Bernardo, his wife Anita, and his sister Maria. They set up the exposition that Bernardo wants his sister to marry his friend Chino, but Maria looks at him and feels nothing! Ay-y-yi! 

At the dance, the principal or teacher or whatever tries to get the Sharks and Jets to dance with each other (there are also Jet and Shark girls), but they ignore him and start rocking out on separate sides of the gym. But eventually that sort of turns into a dance off, and finally they're all just pretty much dancing together. Then Tony and Maria catch each other's eye from across the room and everyone else goes blurry. They walk toward each other in a trance and start talking about how they're all twitterpated until Tony says, "wait, you're not joking, are you?" and Maria fully goes, verbatim: "I do not yet know how to joke that way. And now, with you, I will never learn". And we know Tony's in love because he doesn't vomit in her face and then literally die laughing.

So then they kiss, and Bernardo breaks it up all "get away from mi hermana, you hot dancing stud, you!" 

And both gangs rush over to snap and jump and plie. Then they agree to meet up later that night at Doc's and work out the deets on the final rumble.

Back at home, Maria steps out on the fire escape, all "wherefore art thou Jet?" and Tony shows up and it gets super schoompy and they sing and then Bernardo and Anita come home and Anita catches them together and says nothing because love is blind and Bernardo yells at Maria for dating a Jet and a white dude. He insists that she marry Chino and must obey her because he's the man of the house. Then all the Sharks sans Maria gather on the rooftop and sing at each other. The lady Sharks sing that America is great, better than Puerto Rico because women have rights and can choose their own life partners and opportunities to advance and the men Sharks sing that only white Americans have opportunities and the racial caste system keeps the brown man in a subservient role, while the rich and the white are able to thrive, the brown and the poor barely survive. They both make valid points about racial and gender relations here and abroad. Then Bernardo and Anita grab each other and kiss and some of Bernardo's brown face paint gets on her dress. 

At Doc's, all the dudes show up and agree to meet later still that night and rumble one on one, with a representative from both sides. Bernardo wants to fight Tony, but Tony is a lover not a fighter, and another Jet named Ice agrees to fight him. Bernardo calls Ice a "Mick", and Riff calls Bernardo a "Spic", fulfilling MLK Jr's dream that all racial slurs rhyme. They list the various weapons they will use, but Tony performs a Jedi mind trick and convinces them weapons are for cowards and they should use their fists. Then Schrank shows up and they all pretend they're just hanging out together as friends. Schrank gets all super racist and makes the Sharks leave this part of the neighborhood again. Then he tells the Jets he knows they're planning a rumble and just wants to know where it is. He tells them they're on his side, White is right and all that and they're actually pretty disgusted with him to their credit, and tell him nothing. 

Tony shows back up at Maria's and they get all schoompy yet again and even pretend to get married. (This is the part of Romeo and Juliet where they fuck, but here they pretend to get married.  Oh, Hollywood.  You're so quaint). Then Tony tells Maria about the rumble tonight and how they're only fistfighting, but she thinks that's wrong and tells Tony to go and break up the fight. 

The Sharks and Jets sing about "Tonight" and how they're gonna fight fight fight tonight and Tony and Maria sing counterpoint about how they're in love some more. At the rumble, Ice and Bernardo begin circling each other, brandishing their fisticuffs, then goody-goody Tony shows up and keeps trying to break up the fight. They push him away, hold him back, Bernardo calls him a pussy and takes a swing, but misses him and hits Riff. Suddenly, Riff is in this, replacing Ice as the main fighter. But then Bernardo pulls out a knife!  Then so does Riff!  They lunge and twirl and jump and stab. Tony still keeps trying to butt in, pulling on Riff and finally Bernardo stabs Riff when he's spinning around trying to free himself from Tony's grip. Riff has no right to go "a plague on both your houses", so he just immediately dies. Tony grabs Riff's knife in moment of fury, and stabs Bernardo. The cops siren's blare.  Everyone runs but Tony, who's in a state of shock. He hovers over Riff's body and cries unconvincingly. The guy playing Tony's a shit actor, did I mention that?  A really shit actor. 

Then Chino goes to find Maria and tell her the news but he's all stammering and reluctant and she thinks something's happened to Tony.  "What happened?!  Is Tony okay?!" Chino gets to be the super self-righteous uber-bitch and hits back with, "Oh yeah, he's fine, he just killed your brother is all."  Burn!  Score one for Chino. 

He leaves and Tony shows up and Maria's mad for a respectable fifteen seconds or so and then agrees to meet him at Doc's store posthaste. Anita shows up and Tony escapes out the window. But she sees him go and is pissed and sings at Maria about how he's evil and sucks and killed Bernardo and Maria sings that she loves him and Anita totally comes around. The power of music, ladies and gentlemen. Anita tells Maria that Chino is roaming the streets looking for Tony and planning to kill him. Then Schrank shows up to question Maria about Tony and Bernardo's earlier fight at the school gym. Maria asks Anita to go the Doc's to pick up some "medicine" WINK. Anita reluctantly agrees to go get the "medicine" and tell the "medicine" that Maria is talking to a cop and will be briefly delayed, which is entirely unnecessary but whatever.

Then the Jets, led by Ice, sing a momentum-killing song about how they need to stay cool if questioned by the police and they keep jumping and flailing their arms to connote being "uncool" and then crouching and snapping to connote being "cool". It's a complicated system. Then they go to Doc's to protect Tony from being killed by Chino. 

Anita goes to Doc's looking to pass on the message to Tony that Maria will be very briefly delayed and the Jets harass her and call her a spic and literally grab her and throw her on the ground. It's easily the movie's scariest and uncomfortable scene. We fortunately don't know what they were going to do next because Doc shows up and yells at them. Anita rushes out in fury, but first tells them that they suck and that Doc should tell Tony that Maria was just killed by Chino. 

So Doc goes downstairs where Tony is hiding and tells Tony that Maria is dead. Tony weeps unconvincingly some more, then rushes outside, calling Chino's name. "Chino! Kill me, too!  Kill me!" Then he sees Maria on the other side of the street. She's arrived at Docs after her extraordinarily brief delay talking to the cops and Tony rushes to her and BANG.  Chino appears out of nowhere and kills his ass. He falls into Maria's arms and says, "I guess I didn't believe in our love enough" and Maria says, "no, you were just shot, silly" and he dies. All the Sharks and Jets are there now, standing around looking sad. Maria grabs Chino's gun and starts waving it around, threatening to kill them all and then herself. But then she drops the gun and starts crying. Wait. No double suicide?  That's bullshit. The cops show up and arrest Chino, and Maria says they all have Tony and Bernardo and Riff's blood on their hands and then both the Sharks and Jets carry away Tony's body and everyone is sad and dramatic. 

Review: Yeah, it was fun. Some of the songs were really great and the dancing was superb. I imagine the anti-racism angle was pretty daring for the year, and in general it worked. If you're going to have a musical, why not go all the way and have dancing and singing gang members? And yet later, when things got more serious and real, the movie handled that well, too. I was especially impressed with their willingness to go rel dark, especially with the implied threat of sexual violence by the Jets against Anita.  It was cool that they managed to get Tony to believe that Maria was dead without involving any fake magic potions. The central love story was pretty boring, though. And as I said, Tony was a terrible actor and a couple of the songs were unnecessary and went on too long. And it sucks that Maria didn't die. Apparently, the movie wanted Elvis as Tony but it didn't work out which is really too bad. Not much else to say.  Pretty inoffensive and good, though nowhere near as awesome as Baz Luhrman's take with Leo and Claire Danes. 

Stars: Three and a half out of five. 

Next, the newest and oldest AFI entries.  "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the King" (2001) and then "Intolerance" (1916).  I honestly can't say which one I'm going to hate the most.