West Side Story (1961): Opening Sequence

West Side Story, one of my favorite films depicting the Big Apple, captures the spirit of the city. The tension between the the Jets gang, made up of American-born members, and the Puerto Rican Sharks, the immigrants and outsiders, resonates today. Some themes never change. 

Here is what an Australian critic said about the film's amazing opening sequence:

They are the breathtaking silent shots of New York City at the opening, the silence broken intermittently by the piercing whistles of one of the teenage gangs."

 Eva Sommers,  

The Sun (Australia), Monday, June 11, 1962

The film begins with 5 minutes of uninterrupted music! Leonard Bernstein’s “Overture” plays over a yellow screen punctuated by a series of thin vertical lines. The longing strains of “Tonight” reach a crescendo and then lower softly to “Maria”. A percussive Latin sound slams forth changing the tempo. The words “West Side Story” appear in block letters above a solid red background. The vertical lines dissolve magically to the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan and a gorgeous aerial view of the New York harbor emerges. 

Director Robert Wise's famous helicopter sequence-- became one of the most influential and imitated shots in Hollywood history. Wise explained the opening sequence for West Side Story:

The aerial opening shot was also my concept. I knew I had to deliver New York…. What I wanted to do was show a New York that people hadn’t seen, a different look, almost an abstract one. I wanted to put the audience in a frame of mind to accept the kids dancing in the streets without feeling that twinge of embarrassment.

The camera descends between tenement buildings and down to ground level and enters an inner city playground. Riff, the American gang leader, leans against a wire schoolyard fence accompanied by seven gang members from the Jets. The Jets snap fingers menacingly. The music rises as they grab a basketball from some innocent players. The group pivots in unison and encounters Bernardo, the Puerto Rican gang leader. They threaten him with a fist. Bernardo departs and joins two other Puerto Ricans. The three Puerto Rican dancers perform a series of steps, simultaneously doing a high kick in front of a façade of brownstone tenements. The graceful move by the trio would be become one of the most memorable images of the entire movie. At the ten minutes mark, Bernardo taunts a member of the other gang with “Jet boy,” the film's first words.

The opening ten minutes of every movie express the ground rules for the film. Wise uses the film’s opening to establish that Jerome Robbins’s theatrical vision will be central to the film’s narrative, but sound stage sequences will alternate seamlessly with location shots captured on the city streets.