“The Story of the Suburbs” began as a Broadway musical in 1957, based on the music of Leonard Bernstein, the lyrics of Stephen Sundheim (25), the play by Arthur Lorenz and the direction and choreography of Jerome Robbins. In 1961, Robert Wise, who until then had been better known as the editor of “Citizen Kane” and the director of science fiction films, created a sweeping cinematic adaptation, based almost entirely on the stage source.
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Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter of “International Conspiracies” and “The King and I”, wrote the screenplay. The film became an instant classic. The kind that generations of creators have imitated, copied and quoted, but no one dared renew it. Then came Steven Spielberg and Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter and playwright Tony Kushner, who had already worked together on “Munich” and “Lincoln,” and decided that the musical needed to be reworked. Not a remake of the film, but an up-to-date adaptation of the stage version, for the 21st century audience, and especially for America, whose story with the Puerto Ricans never ceases to be topical.
Lincoln Center will be established here
Their “Suburb Story” hits theaters a year late following Corona, but it comes at a perfect time: just 60 years since the original film premiered, two weeks after Steven Sondheim died at age 91, and ten days before Spielberg’s 75th birthday. The film is dedicated to Spielberg’s father, Arnold, who died at the age of 103, just before Spielberg finished work on the film, which was inspired by the film his father took him to see when he was 15 years old.
Spielberg’s brilliant opening whip lays the groundwork for the adaptation: it’s a more urban version, occurring on the streets of Manhattan, ignoring the stage positions the first film conveyed to the screen. It also leaves the plot in the early 1960s, but responds to the fact that the film was made 60 years later and could give some of the situations a historical context. And so, even though the Hebrew name has become a brand, Spielberg’s first, long, winding whip mentions that there are no suburbs in “The Story of the Suburbs,” a film that takes place in the heart of Manhattan, 68th Street at 68th Street. Construction and gentrification, and four years after the premiere of the original film, it will become Lincoln Center, which still houses the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic Hall and the Juilliard School of Music.
The location of the film’s plot in the heart of Manhattan, on its West Side, is a significant motif in a story that moves between two islands: Manhattan and Puerto Rico, both ex-territories within America, and the question of which characters they can call “home.” The same opening shot shows the last days of the slum in its demolition, with its metal balconies and emergency stairs, which in the updated design of Adam Stockhausen (“The French Time.news”) become bars that imprison the figures. The choreography often seems to be influenced by courtship and battle movements of birds, thus creating a beautiful visual image of birds imprisoned in a cage, unable to escape their fate. Call it: the suburban bird.
The original film was created by Jews who looked at the world and told a personal story, skipping the word “anti-Semitism” and making it universal
This is the story of Tony and Maria, and was inspired by “Romeo and Juliet” – Kushner’s script version further emphasizes the connection between Leonard Bernstein’s work and William Shakespeare’s tragedy, giving a bold place to Doc’s Pharmacy. But Doc is no longer there: Doc is dead and the pharmacy (drugstore in the current version) is now run by his Puerto Rican widow Valentina. In the most beautiful and moving tribute in the film, Valentina – who did not exist in the original play = plays 90-year-old Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for her role as Anita in the original film. She gets the most beautiful and important song in the film, teaching us that everything that is happening now, she has already seen happen in her long life, every generation and its tragic love story, impossible loves that are avoided because of hatred and racism.
A remake of The Suburbs Story was inevitable. In the original version, Natalie Wood, a daughter of Russian parents, was cast, who was cast in a brown color to play a Puerto Rican and could not sing (Marnie Nixon voiced her voice in songs). Today, racial awareness is more acute, so it is difficult for a Latin audience to watch the classic “suburban story” and not see it as a story about the gentrification of roles and not just real estate. Spielberg made sure that all the Latin characters would be played by actors who are second or third generation immigrants from Puerto Rico or the Caribbean.
This is a parable about an impossible, socially unacceptable love, which is accompanied by a death sentence, and this point is highlighted by screenwriter Tony Kushner
Which begs the question: if the idea in the new film is to be precise in the representation of the characters and their stories, why is the film directed by a 75-year-old white man and not a son of Puerto Rican immigrants? A seemingly fair and relevant question for the United States today, but missing the core of the original “Suburb Story.” Jerome Robbins (originally Rabinowitz), who came up with the idea for the play, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Lorenz and Robert Wise: “The Story of the Suburbs” is a Jewish work. Just as Shakespeare was not Italian when he wrote Romeo and Juliet, which takes place in Verona, so all the Jewish men who created The Story of the Suburbs looked at the world beneath their noses – with gangs of veteran Poles and new Puerto Ricans fighting for their territory – and told a personal story. “Anti-Semitism” and makes it universal. It’s a story about racism, discrimination, hate crimes and assimilation. It is also a story about young people without parents, who have to carve a place for themselves in the world, without guidance, without supervision, without a chance.
The Anthem Against Discrimination and Homophobia
And there was another thing that characterized the creators: almost all of them were gay. Years after The Suburbs Story came out, the big hit “Somewhere” took on the status of an anthem against racism: against discrimination against blacks after the assassination of Martin Luther King and against homophobia. “The Story of the Suburbs” is a parable about an impossible, socially unacceptable love that is accompanied by a death sentence. And this point, which was hidden in the original version, Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”) highlights a little more in his script, which only highlights how sharp and relevant the lyrics of the original Sundheim and Bernstein songs in 2021 are just as in 1957.
There are lots of benefits to this processing, with updates and refinements, while jealously guarding the original version. This is a film that is superbly made, at the level of cinema that is rare to find today. A classic cinema with an up-to-date momentum, by an up-and-coming screenwriter and director. But there is only one problem. Spielberg directed a perfect remake of a perfect film, for an audience unwilling to see films made before they were born. For everyone else, the 1961 film will always remain the original, so with all the applause and admiration one should also recognize that Spielberg has created an unnecessary masterpiece.
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