West Side Story (2021)

A recent, burgeoning appetite for musicals—rebooted, reimagined, remade, new or old—continues unabated with Steven Spielberg’s 2021 take on 1961’s West Side Story. While the original was directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, with music of course by Leonard Bernstein, this update includes a new arrangement and adaptation of the score by David Newman.

In this minute and a half teaser, it says something that fully a third of it is dedicated to playing on expectations, being that West Side Story is already so fully baked into the popular imagination. We begin only with an off-screen whistle that clearly pays homage to the iconic tritone motif in the original opening scene (and throughout).

Notice the relatively subtle editing at 0:14 as the church bell lines up with the return to the original note in the whistling. This leads to strings and brass leaning into a single note, only to black out at 0:41.

Then, as if out of a dream, we’re introduced to a rearranged version of the track “Somewhere”, sung by the main characters, Tony and Maria—as central to the story as can be. Notice how at 0:44 there is a strong musical counterpoint between the single, unadorned singing voice, and the silent—yet, visually packed—gym full of dancers on screen. As an action montage plays out, we’re treated to tremolo strings that emerge out of close-mic’d piano for the action scenes, which are also punctuated lightly by percussive triplets. Throughout, plaintive, single-note piano musings both introduce this latter half off the trailer and lead us out.

It remains to be heard just how much of this music are purely borne of Newman’s decision making in modernizing the arrangement and how much of it is a conscious adherence to recent conventions in trailer music, but it’s easy to imagine it leaning towards the latter. Certainly, the percussion would feel out of place in a typical rendition of “Somewhere”; similarly, the trope of slow piano music feels less a cogent part of the arrangement and more of an intro and coda. Ending on the piano line also emphasize a sense of the music almost evaporating rather than resolving, as it ends on a dominant chord—reflecting the singer’s impassioned search for “somewhere”.

Apart from those famous Bernstein harmonic changes and the iconic lyrics and melody “Somewhere”, however, what remains indelible to those who remember the original are those nostalgia-inducing whistles. It speaks volumes that half the teaser is committed to these whistles, and moreover they remain all but untouched. It’s having the confidence and foresight to leave it alone that adds to the impact of the latter half of the trailer.

— Curtis Perry