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Chapter 5 - Coming to Grips with Shakespeare’s Tragedy in a Film Musical: Re-assessing Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’s West Side Story (1961)

from Part I - Revisiting the Canon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2023

By
Pascale Drouet
Edited by
Victoria Bladen ,
Sarah Hatchuel  and
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin
Victoria Bladen
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Sarah Hatchuel
Affiliation:
University Paul-Valéry Montpellier
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin
Affiliation:
University Paul-Valéry Montpellier
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Summary

Before mainly focussing on Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s musical to examine relevant correspondences with Shakespeare’s play (such as the sustained rhythm of physical confrontations, or the poetic stasis of pure love, or the hectic reactions induced by loss and despair, or other emotional archetypes), this chapter will examine former screen adaptations in relation with either music or singing or dancing (including George Cukor’s 1936 version, with Agnes de Mille as a choreographer; André Cayatte’s 1949 Les Amants de Vérone, with Isabelle Aubret as a singer and Renato Castellani’s 1954 version, with Roman Vlad as a composer), so as to consider how and when emotional intensity is added to the play-text, and how West Side Story takes after and also increases such emotional intensity, as it wonderfully combines its screenplay with songs, symphonic orchestra, melodic and rhythmic variations, the dramatic device of leitmotifs and choreography.

Keywords

Romeo and JulietmusicalWest Side StoryLes Amants de VéroneRobbinsWiseCastellaniBernstein
Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet , pp. 79 - 92
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Works Cited

Berson, M., Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination (Milwaukee: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2011).Google Scholar
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Laster, A., ‘Le Cinéma dans le cinéma. À propos des Amants de Vérone de Jacques Prévert et André Cayatte’, in Wilhelm, F. (ed.), Le Théâtre dans le théâtre, le cinéma au cinéma (Manage: Lansman, 2002), 185–94.Google Scholar
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Shakespeare, W., Laurents, A., Werstine, P. and Houghton, N., Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story, Introduction by Houghton, N. (New York: Random House, 1965).Google Scholar
Shearer, M., ‘A new way of living: West Side Story, street dance and the New York musical’, Screen 56.4 (Spring 2015): 450–70.Google Scholar
Tatspaugh, P., “The tragedies of love on film”, in Jackson, Russell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 141–64.Google Scholar
Teague, F., ‘Shakespeare and musical theatre’, in Burnett, M. T., Streete, A. and Wray, R. (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 185–99.Google Scholar

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