'West Side Story': When remakes are valuable

by Mitchel Green - May 31, 2023

| mitchelgreen34@gmail.com source: The Movie Database

With the release of Disney’s live-action remake of their classic animated film “The Little Mermaid,” the company continues its streak of putting out unnecessary, worse versions of their beloved classic films. Some may argue that these remakes can introduce younger audiences to these stories or that they can update the stories to fit modern sensibilities, but there’s only one real reason these films get made: money. Why else would they be remaking “Moana,” a film released less than a decade ago?

In a Hollywood landscape that values IP over all else, studios are milking all they can out of whatever properties are sitting unused in their studio vaults. In the last decade, Disney has released 12 direct remakes of their animated films, with roughly nine more in the works, not including sequels to their already released remakes. They are all bad and for the same reasons. The films lose much of the energy and emotional expressiveness from the animation, and they don’t differentiate themselves enough from the original animated features to feel like losing those things was necessary.

Remakes are not a new phenomenon in Hollywood. The original “A Star Is Born” from 1937 has been remade three times, as early as the Judy Garland-led 1954 remake to the recently released Bradley Cooper-Lady Gaga feature in 2018. And remakes are not inherently worthless cash grabs. The 1978 remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” does such creative work with the material that it has become the definitive version of that story. But what makes a remake valuable? What does one have to do with an existing story to make it worthwhile to watch a new version rather than firing up a readily available original?

To answer these questions, I want to look at Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story.” The original 1961 film is a personal favorite of mine, and while I wasn’t worried about a new version “ruining” my fondness for the classic (particularly with Spielberg at the helm), I was concerned about the necessity of remaking the musical. If a near-perfect version of the film exists, what can a remake possibly do to differentiate itself enough from the original and not lose what made it great in the first place? Most of the changes Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner make are minor: following the structure of the stage musical closer than that of the original film, changing lyrics in songs (also following the stage musical), and most importantly, the Puerto Ricans in the film are no longer being played by white actors in brownface. But the major difference between the two “West Side Story” films is their aesthetics.

One of the most striking aspects of the original 1961 version is director Robert Wise and cinematographer Daniel L. Fapp’s gorgeously vibrant use of color. On top of just making the images pop a bit more, something studios would have wanted out of their big productions as television was trying to eat into their business, the film’s most impactful uses of color are for dramatic purposes. During the “Dance at the Gym” sequence, the entire room bursts with bright colors — from the blinding red walls to the barrage of oranges, blues, golds, pinks, and purples from the costumes. Along with the fabulous choreography, the colors make the sequence come alive, making it far more emotionally impactful when all of the colors are drowned out by shadows as Tony and Maria meet. As eye-catching as the rest of the room is, they can see only each other.

Likewise, during the “Somewhere” number, as Tony and Maria try to figure out what to do after Tony has killed Bernardo, the couple are positioned on opposite ends of the frame, with different colors lighting the wall behind each — red for Tony and blue for Maria. As the song continues, Tony tries to pull Maria towards him, into the red side of the frame, but Maria keeps moving back into the blue. As the song ends, and Tony and Maria kiss as they decide they love each other and want to try to keep going, the wall behind them now has a combination of blues and reds behind both. They are one now.

Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s use of color is far more muted. The images are far more desaturated compared to the vibrancy of the 1961 version. It doesn’t aim to give the story a more realistic look — how realistic can a film where gang members snap and move like ballet dancers be? — but it makes the narrative feel more brutal and the tragedy more devastating. Spielberg and Kaminski are still interested in the artifice the use of color in the original version creates, but they go about it by manipulating light instead.

This is clear in the “One Hand, One Heart” sequence, one of the more noticeable uses of color in the film, as yellows, reds, and blues wash over Tony and Maria’s faces. The movement of the colors on their faces feels like emotions swelling. But the more memorable, striking image is the flare of light that euphorically bursts upon the two of them as they kiss. The best shot in the entire film is almost devoid of color — the one toward the end of “Maria” as Tony steps into the puddle and the lights shimmer around him in a way that looks like he’s in a different dimension entirely.

Spielberg can get the same vivacity that Wise does from using color, but he does it with camera movement. Whereas in the original version, the relatively static wide shots allow the actors to explore the space, and the grace and beauty of movement come from the choreography, in Spielberg’s version, the movement of the camera grabs that same grace and beauty and adds a sense of dynamism. It doesn’t lose any of what the original version has in terms of energy, it just captures it differently.

The “Dance at the Gym” sequence again highlights how the director wants to use his aesthetic tools for dramatic purposes. Spielberg wants his version of this sequence to feel more lively and more intense, and he achieves this by combining quick, energetic cutting-on movement with sweeping camera movements that allow deft bouncing between reactions of different characters. And much in the way Wise uses the absence of color to reflect when Tony and Maria can see only each other, Spielberg stops moving the camera so we can focus on the two of them, contrasting with the fast movement of the people around them.

The 2021 version of “West Side Story” is the pinnacle of what the remake can be. It can fix flaws with an original work, but typically a remake will only be made for an already beloved film — how else can studios expect to make money if their IP is worthless? So to make a film remake worthwhile, the new version needs to capture the emotional weight of the original in a new, creative way. It’s not about making minor, surface-level changes. It's about using filmmaking tools and tricks the original didn’t (or maybe even couldn’t) to create a work that escapes the shadow of its predecessor. It needs to feel fresh, even when the material is old. Spielberg and company accomplish that with “West Side Story,” but its unfortunate box office struggles mean Hollywood likely won’t pay attention to the lessons they can learn from it. Instead, it’s more likely we get a neverending string of remakes like the live-action ones Disney keeps pumping out because they keep making money.