MovieChat Forums > West Side Story (2021) Discussion > Stage vs Film vs Film-Song Order

Stage vs Film vs Film-Song Order

posted 3 years ago by IMDBRefugee1SD (139)
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In the stage version the songs "I Feel Pretty" and "Gee, Officer Krupke" were placed after
"The Rumble" in the second act after the intermission. I think this was done because without
them the second act whould be very short. In The 61 Film they were placed before "The Rumble" which makes more sense. Those two songs are optimistic like the rest of the songs before
"The Rumble". After "The Rumble" it's all downhill to tragedy. The 21 Film splits the difference,
with "Krupke" before "The Rumble" and "Pretty" after. A recent book on the 21 film suggests
that having "I Feel Pretty' after the rumble as in stage and 21 film is ironic. Maria is on top of the world, not knowing what happened at the rumble.
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[–] mplo (2356) 3 years ago

Frankly, IMDBRefugee, I'm in total agreement with you here on the opinion that having "Officer Krupke" and "I Feel Pretty" placed before the Rumble, as they were in the old, original 1961 film version of West Side Story made a great deal more sense, which is partly why I prefer the old, original 1961 film version of West Side Story to the new 2021 film version of WSS.

[–] StrongRex (1319) 3 years ago

I made a thread here regarding the differences between the 1961 movie and the Broadway stage musical, and went into detail about why the stage musical doesn’t work. However, I will also point out that another mistake they made was having Act I end at the rumble. Act I should have ended at the end of the scene in Doc’s store (another improvement made in the movie), because there is still some hope that Tony and Maria’s romance will end happily. Ending it at the rumble makes Act I too long and Act II too short - the three writers probably thought this would make an excellent cliffhanger but they were wrong. There is no cliffhanger at the end of Act I in the stage show because we know that nothing good is going to happen after that.

Not to mention that the way it’s originally written, Tony has barely, if any, time for a costume change between the end of the scene at Doc’s and when he is supposed to meet Maria in the bridal shop. They don’t have I Feel Pretty in the bridal shop, it begins right when Anita and Maria are supposed to get off their shift, so that is a real time crunch for the actor. I believe the story problems for this scene is a bigger issue here, but putting the actor through that is also unacceptable.