Natalie Wood and George Chakiris

Two of Wise's directorial trademarks helped to make WEST SIDE STORY stand out from previous Hollywood musicals: his goal to realistically portray characters and their surroundings (always a challenge for a musical in which characters break into song) and his editng skills (moving away from the traditional longshot for song-and-dance numbers by utilizing quick cuts and varied angles—techniques which revolutionized the musical).

The highly stylized "modern" Romeo and Juliet had been a play and adapting it to screen provided specific challenges for Wise, which he discussed at a seminar with AFI students:

"I fought from the beginning to open the film in New York in its setting, in its background, because we couldn't put stylized sets on movie stages like they had on the theater stage—they don't work in films. Stylized sets only work if you're doing an utter fantasy like THE WIZARD OF OZ. So, I fought to have the whole early part, down through "Something's Coming" in New York. Because if you think about the show from there on, from that point on, everything then is either at sunset or at night. And I figured that we could do sets that got away with street sets, alleys, rooftops, this set and the other, at sunset with the sunset lighting. And of course, night is no problem."*

Dancing in the streets, however, seemed like it could be a problem for choreographer Jerome Robbins, who co-directed some of the film with Wise. The ingenious veteran found a way to make it happen, though, leading to some of the most dynamic dancing ever to be filmed.

"Jerry agreed with this, but he said, 'You've given me the most difficult task right off the bat: to take my most stylized dancing in the piece and put it against the most real backgrounds we have in the picture.' He struggled with it. We made tests in downtown Los Angeles streets in daylight. We had a rig running around the studio streets with Betty Wahlberg [rehearsal pianist] at a little piano on a trolley and an umbrella over her. She'd be pulled along as she played and the dancers would rehearse along the streets as Jerry studied, developed, and adapted the dance steps to the outdoors and the sunlight."*

The film, after two years in the making, was a great personal success for Wise, the cast and crew, as well as a financial success for the studio.