40 Days, 40 Moments in Art — Day 6: Mambo at a West Side Gym
One of my film professors at USC once claimed that film ages faster than any other form of art. He may be right. Even something as timeless as, say… Star Wars features aesthetic clues that are undeniably from the era in which the movie was made (like those late 70s hair cuts in all their blowdried glory).
West Side Story has certainly aged since it first came out in movie theaters in 1961, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least not in this day and age. In this story about two rival gangs in New York’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, the costumes aren’t old-fashioned, they’re vintage, the sort of thing a hipster might wear on their way to a microbrewery. The slang is old school, “cooly cool,” and the dancing…, well the dancing is classic, more than worthy of watching, possibly “the swingin’est thing” you’ll see on celluloid (or digitally restored HD).
Except, of course, when the actors are dance fighting. A pair of grown men doing Turning C jumps around each other is impressive, sure, but it doesn’t look much like fighting. Neither does a pointed toe front kick that whiffs the air two feet from a guy that’s probably too busy snapping his fingers to block the ferocious breeze that’s coming his way. I love this movie, and I always try to watch musicals with an open mind, but the dance fighting pulls me out of the story every single time.
Yet in spite of its age and all of its overly choreographed tomfoolery, West Side Story is as timeless as its source material. It’s Romeo and Juliet on the streets of New York. It’s that classic story of boy meets girl, boy kills girl’s brother, girl falls in love with boy anyways, and tragedy ensues, but not before boy and girl share romantic moments so chock of emotion that they give new meaning to the phrase “all the feels.”
Not only is the story timeless, the themes are surprisingly relevant. The story’s starry-eyed lovers as well as the street gangs they associate with are separated by a racial divide between Whites and Latinos. The song “America” is chillingly on point in its depiction of the double set of hardships faced by immigrants in this country. Latino immigrants, in particular, are often forced to choose between the racial injustices of their new home and the scourges of poverty and unsafe neighborhoods in the places from which they came (even if the places they came from happen to be part of the United States as Puerto Rico is). Many would say the lyrics still ring true:
“Life is all right in America.”
“If you’re all-white in America.”
As if to prove the point of their own film in a sort of twisted way, the directors cast a white actress, Natalie Wood, as the Puerto Rican leading lady. Before we take this is as a sign that the film is outdated, we must remember that Hollywood white-washing continues to this day, even if its not always as blatant. Apparently even the casting of West Side Story brings up topical issues that still ring true. I must admit, however, that I had a hard time not falling in love with Natalie Wood in this film. She is the Juliet of the story after all, even if her romance begins in a gym instead of a Capulet ball.
The gym is neutral ground, a place where the White Jets and Puerto Rican Sharks can meet up without fear of getting stabbed in the back (or served up with a string of arabesque leaps and cool cat power poses). Yet, the rivalry remains, and if you can’t dance your way into a fight, you might as well fight by way of a dance contest. Once the words “Mambo” are yelled, the contest is on. The Puerto Rican brigade in purple and red show the paler kids in blue and orange how Latin dancing is done. Anita, played by Rita Moreno who won an Oscar for the role, carves through the floor with regal defiance, sweeping her skirt across from her partner, Bernardo (George Chakiris), with the fluid finesse of a matador leading a bull. Yet, just when you think the Sharks have shamed their caucasian counterparts, the Jets rally back, led by the insane gymnastics of their limber leader, Riff (Russ Tamblyn).
The dance contest is so engaging that the camera focuses on every moment, until unexpectedly, we see Maria (Natalie Woods) on one edge of the frame and Tony (Richard Beymer) on the other. She sees him for the first time, and he, of course, sees her. Up to this point, they are almost forgotten in the midst of the sequence, spectators enjoying the back and forth along with the audience. It’s almost a jarring transition, watching them go from characters in the background to the focus of our attention. Normally, in a classic Hollywood film, when one character looks at another, you have a close up or medium shot of that character followed by a cut to a shot of the other, but here, this all starts with a wide shot with both characters in view. The entire dance contest is still in visible. Our focus is fixed on the couple instead by means of a sort of filter that makes everything else hazy and distorted. When we finally get our close ups of Maria in her iconic white dress and Tony in his tan coat, they’re framed by blurred suggestions of the continuous dance battle going on around them. The music fades and changes as the couple slowly walks towards each other, both of them unphased even as dancers cross their path with forms that come into focus for brief fleeting moments.
Subtle cinema this is not, but I can think of few films that capture this type of moment better, that moment when you see someone across the way and your eyes refuse to look anywhere else. Time doesn’t stand still. It continues all around, but you’re too lost in the moment to notice, a moment that feels like it could lead to countless moments, enough moments to fill a lifetime with someone you’ve only met for a few seconds.
As Tony and Maria finally meet in the middle, the music slows and the scene grows dark and intimate. The dancers behind them slow down as well, pulling out of their maniacal Mambo contest and settling into pairs, each mirroring the simple poses of the couple at center stage. It’s a moment of peace between warring gangs, a moment that suggests that even in the midst of rivalries and racial divides, love can and will find a way. It’s a moment from a flawed film that shows flawed people falling in love.
In other words, it’s timeless.
[Apologies, the only full version of this scene I could find on YouTube has Turkish? subtitles?]
