The modern 'Romeo and Juliet', now with Spielberg's signature

The Jets and Sharks are back at it again on the big screen. 60 years later, the two gangs are facing each other once more and, above all, they are determined that the love story between Maria and Tony won't come to fruition. We're talking, of course, about West Side Story, the well-known Oscar-winning musical that premiered in 1961 (the original theatre musical premiered four years earlier). This time, the film is having a second life in cinemas with the remake directed by Steven Spielberg. It will open in theatres across the city on 22 December and is expected to be one of the highest-grossing films of the Christmas season.

With a script by Tony Kushner from a libretto of Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by the late Stephen Sondheim, the creators of West Side Story never hid the fact that it was a modern-day adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In the film, the story takes place in a New York slum. Two groups, one made up of European Americans and the other of Puerto Rican immigrants, are fighting for the hegemony of the territory. The newly born romance between Tony, an American who is the best friend of a member of one of the gangs, and Maria, the sister of the other gang's leader, will push tensions to the limit. The new West Side Story stars Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose and David Alvarez. The original, the 1960s film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, won 10 Oscars, and many of its various songs are well-known around the world.

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