This research examines the depiction of ethnic groups, stereotypes, and racial bigotry in the film West Side Story, with a view toward identifying the degree to which it was an accurate mirror of 1950s America. The research will set forth the context in which the film appeared and then discuss its depiction of racial types, comparing that depiction with the actual conditions of racial bias, bigotry, stereotyping, discrimination, and tensions between ethnic groups extant in the U.S. in 1961, the year of the film's release.
When West Side Story opened in motion picture theatres in the autumn of 1961, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther hailed it as a cinema masterpiece that used "the freer and less restricted medium of the mobile photograph" on the big screen to give "range and natural aspect" to the story's juvenile-gang-war theme (Crowther 351). That theme had made its theatrical debut in a Broadway musical staged by Jerome Robbins, who choreographed (and codirected, with Robert Wise) the film. Crowther called for a thoughtful, sympathetic response to the tragedy "in the staggering sense of wastage of the energies of kids" (352). West Side Story was not, however, universally praised by the critics. Kael's evaluation of the "widely admired opening shots of New York" is that they lend sociological importance to the film but do not conceal the "mawkish" love story between Maria and Tony. Nevertheless, the movie won the Oscar for Best Picture.
The context of the love plot in West Side Story is an analogue of Romeo and Juliet. In Shakespeare's play, love between Romeo and Juliet is forbidden because each comes from rival noble families in Verona, the Montagues and Capulets. In West Side Story, the love is forbidden on two levels: because Maria is Puerto Rican and Tony is not, and because the families of each are associated with New York ethnic street gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks (headed by Maria's brother Bernardo) and the Jet...