West Side Story (1961) vs West Side Story (2021)

West Side Story

Genre: Classical Musical and Romance

Classical Musical Drama

This article goes into detail to explain how this genre in the newer version of West Side Story is still the same but reset to fit modern-day conflicts. A modern aspect of the film cinematically justifies its remake and the status of the film, from the past, the movie featured many Puerto Rican characters portrayed by white actors in "brown face", instead of being played by Latino actors, the modern version sets its sights to fix the failures of the previous adaptation, this is seen more as a reset.

https://georgetownvoice.com/2022/02/05/west-side-story-2021 (Retrieved Feb.5 2022)

Romance

This article talks about how the adaptation reworked the traditional love story, the origin of two lovers that crossed racial barriers, this article brings up the point that it translates the original barrier to a revolutionary style for the newer adaptation. The original film brings to light the realism of social tragedy in such an urban environment, some of this film includes ideas of ethnic boundaries and romance between two upsetting racial backgrounds and how love prevails.

https://www.filmsite.org/wests.html (Retrieved Dec.28 2012)

 

 Social History: West Side Story (1961) and West Side Story (2021)

West Side Story (1961)

In this article the author writes about how excellent this film was for its time, although it was nominated and won 10 academy awards the film is hardly spoken of these days, West Side Story was the kind of musical that was admirable but unrealistic sentiments, and how gang wars were conveyed during this time period. The songs from Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim were powerful performances that uplifted a generation of audiences, the shaky topics of ethnic backgrounds and the nature of love and commitment are all conveyed through song and dance, and that’s why this film will always go down in history as a classical masterpiece.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-west-side-story-1961 (Retrieved Feb.15, 2004)

West Side Story (2021)

This article explains the critical differences between the original movie and the adaptation, although this movie is seen as just another adaptation Steven Spielberg the play writer tells us here that this movie should be in conversation with its own history, he says this adaptation is more than a Broadway musical, it’s a deep revisioning of the original, a way of resetting modern socio-economic culture when it deals with racial boundaries, by this it changes core qualities that tragically the original was a subject of its time too while sticking to the same core values and themes as the original it is seen here as a fresh time appropriate reset.

https://www.vulture.com/2021/12/west-side-story-2021 (Retrieved Dec.28, 2021)