Amazon.com Essentials:
The winner of 10 Academy Awards, this 1961 musical by
choreographer Jerome Robbins and director Robert Wise (The Sound of
Music) remains irresistible. Based on a smash Broadway play
updating Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the 1950s era of
juvenile delinquency, the film stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer
as the star-crossed lovers from different neighborhoods--and
ethnicities. The film's real selling points, however, are the
highly-charged and inventive song-and-dance numbers, the passionate
ballads, the moody sets, colorful support from Rita Moreno, and the
sheer accomplishment of Hollywood talent and technology producing a
film so stirring. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim wrote the
score. The DVD release has a widescreen presentation, Dolby sound,
optional French subtitles. --Tom Keogh
