Scene from West Side Story film prologue

 

The 1961 filmed version of the musical West Side Story marked a significant departure from the Hollywood set musicals that dominated 1950s cinema. From the film’s opening scene, directors Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise strove to eliminate any sense of artifice by framing the choreography both as the protagonists’ natural mode of expression and as an organic product of New York City’s streets. This storyboard rendering was created to help plot out the 10-minute sequence that establishes the opposition between rival gangs the Jets and the Sharks at the start of the movie, with the Jets literally tagging the city to claim ownership of their territory.