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West Side Story: Changing The Musical Film Genre

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West Side Story: Changing the Musical Film Genre
The musical film West Side Story (1961) was greatly successful. Nominated for eleven Academy Awards and receiving ten, this movie rose to the top of everyone’s expectations. It changed the genre of musicals and film elevating the story to a new level where it prospered and flourished. This film did something other films and musicals never did before; taking a classical Shakespearian play, Romeo and Juliet and modernizing it. The musical revised a well-known story, connecting viewers personally to musical. By using the current time period, problems within society, and altering the classic play subtly, the film drastically advanced a memorable and now classic movie/musical. Additionally, West …show more content…
Instead of taking place in Verona during the Renaissance, West Side Story took place in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the mid-1950s. Changing the genre of films and musicals, this show consistently illustrated similarities to the classic play of Shakespeare while continuously throwing in curveballs of its own. Starting with the opening scene in the film, there were two rival gangs, similar to the play. Like the play, there are the two gangs in the musical that fight in the opening number, the Jets (the “Americans”) and the Sharks (the Puerto Ricans). The two main characters fall in love at first sight at a dance. The protagonists of both are not allowed to be with one another. In the play and musical, the main love interests must hide their relationships due to fear of how their families might react. Also, the main male leads, Tony and Romeo, kill relatives of their love interests (Bernardo, Maria’s brother, and Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin). The two stories use the storyline of the “tragic hero,” thus both leading men die. The similarities continue even with the ending where it is like a funeral in the film, similar to Romeo and Juliet. The film maintains the core elements of the fundamental Shakespeare classic. West Side Story does change part of the classic story, however; making it challenge what other musicals had never successfully done to the extent this movie

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