West Side Story Theme

The Film "West Side Story" illustrates how the Puerto Ricans of New York faced discrimination and were used as scapegoats by the American people during the cold war time period to escape their anxieties. Due to the fear of communism and possible nuclear war the 1950-1960s time period was a very fragile time for the American people which produced an air of xenophobia throughout the country. The air of xenophobia is present throughout the play due of the repeated mention of stereotypes about Puerto Ricans and the constant feeling that the Puerto Ricans do not belong. The people of American often dealt with these anxieties in one of two ways, through escapism or through and through the scapegoating. This is made very clear through the comparison of West Side Story to the play The Music Man in the document “West Side Story and The Music Man: Whiteness, Immigration, and Race in the US during the late 1950s”. Like many waves of immigrants, the Puerto Ricans faced discrimination when they arrived and for some time after. This came in the form of people being discriminatory directly to them, housing discrimination and job discrimination. Therefore, the play “West Side Story” expresses the discrimination that Puerto Ricans faced due to the xenophobic nature of the time period.

The film starts out in a predominantly Italian American neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York in the mid 1950s. The values that were held the highest at that time in place were family and money. The film's other major setting is John F Kennedy Airport, which is the scene of many of the hijackings and robberies that occur in the movie.

Gangs of New York (2002), a bold and violent movie directed by Martin Scorsese takes us back to a New York without skyscrapers and modern-day lavishes that shows the rise of violent gang power and political corruption. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis, the film features a personal struggle placed within the context of gang warfare between Nativists and immigrants, which is set in the larger context of the Draft Riots and the Civil War. It is a reconstructed historical narrative that uses interlocking events filled with gang violence and political corruption to show how the modern New York was born.

“ The year began with the hanging of one man and ended with the drowning of another,” (3) the man who was hanged was a man named Ronald Ryan. “ What did he do….We won’t worry about that now….Whatever he did, I ask you, is it right to take a man and hang him, coldly, at eight o’clock in the morning? ” (5)

Prejudice can manifest itself in many different ways, sometimes in the least likely of them. We often assume that the people we place our trust and faith in are free of prejudice, but this is not always true. We can observe this in real life and literature, as seen through the short story “The Stolen Party” by Liliana Heker. This story, about a young girl learning to understand the nature of prejudice and trust, introduces an important theme; that when we encounter prejudice, we should fight for what we believe. This theme is explored through Rosaura’s interaction with her mother, Luciana’s cousin and Senora Ines. These three characters lead Rosaura to question her beliefs, but nonetheless encourage her to to challenge any prejudice directed

In the book, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie Zamperini was majorly obsessed with vengeance throughout the end of the book that his life was consumed by the quest for it. Louie felt as if the Bird had stolen his dignity at the POW campsites, where he was beaten, humiliated, starved, and stripped of his powers of self-defense. Louie was overwhelmed with his anger that the only objective he sought was to get revenge on the Bird. In other words, Louie was angered about his loss of dignity at the POW campsite, he wanted to get revenge on the Bird by killing him, and how Louie eventually forgives the Bird for what he did to him. These three reasons show how Louie’s loss of self-dignity in the POW camp was pursued.

The critically acclaimed film, Goodfellas, is a gangster crime drama that features an incredible amount of talent. Household names such as: Robert De Niro (Jimmy Conway), Joe Pesci (Tommy DeVito), Paul Sorvino (Paul Cicero), and promising stars like Ray Liotta (Henry Hill) and Lorraine Bracco (Karen Hill), attracted numerous Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. That type of cast power, linked with the signature talent of Martin Scorsese as a director, made for cinematic gold. Unquestionably, the actors and actresses did an excellent job augmenting the verisimilitude of this film and compelling audiences to empathize with their characters. But the cinematography in this film plays just as large a role in having audiences feel what the characters are feeling at a specific moment. Through the use of freeze frames, we learn of significant moments that shape Henry into the man that he is. By means of first-person narration we are able to know exactly what is going through a particular character’s mind. Finally, wonderful editing made great use of point of view and multiple jump cuts, which added to the sensation that we are undergoing the same experiences as the characters on screen. I will go into further detail and specify scenes that convey these elements as the essay progresses. Altogether, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas effectively depicts paramount scenes and allows the audience to empathize with the characters by virtue of stylistic editing and cinematography.

The critically acclaimed film, Goodfellas, is a gangster crime drama that features a great deal of talent. Household names such as Robert De Niro (Jimmy Conway), Joe Pesci (Tommy DeVito), Paul Sorvino (Paul Cicero), and promising stars like Ray Liotta (Henry Hill) and Lorraine Bracco (Karen Hill), attracted numerous Golden Globes and Academy Awards nominations. That type of cast power, linked with the signature talent of Martin Scorsese as a director, made for cinematic gold. Unquestionably, the actors and actresses did an excellent job augmenting the verisimilitude of this film and compelling audiences to empathize with their characters. But the cinematography in this film plays just as large a role in having audiences feel what the characters are feeling at a specific moment. Through the use of freeze frames, we learn of significant moments that shape Henry into the man that he is. By means of first-person narration, we are able to know exactly what is going through a particular character’s mind. Finally, strong editing made efficient use of multiple jump cuts, which add to the sensation that we are undergoing the same experiences as the characters on screen. Altogether, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas effectively depicts paramount scenes and allows the audience to empathize with the characters by virtue of stylistic editing and cinematography.

Film Noir, a term coined by the French to describe a style of film characterized by dark themes, storylines, and visuals, has been influencing cinematic industries since the 1940’s. With roots in German expressionistic films and Italian postwar documentaries, film noir has made its way into American film as well, particularly identified in mob and crime pictures. However, such settings are not exclusive to American film noir. One noteworthy example is Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard, which follows the foreboding tale of Joe Gillis, the desperate-for-success protagonist, who finds himself in the fatal grips of the disillusioned femme fatale Norma Desmond. Not only does the storyline’s heavy subject matter and typical character

Street gangs in the northeast of the United States came about in three phases. The first phase took place after the American Revolution and consisted of youth fighting over turf. The second phase of street gangs started to emerge in 1820, which coincided with a rise of immigration. This is when serious ganging began taking place. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Latino and Black populations grew, and eventually, over two-thirds of the gangs in New York were Puerto Rican or Black. This third phase of gang activity is the subject for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, which features the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Polish-American Jets and the romantic relationship between two people, one from each gang, which suffers to exist amidst the violence between the two gangs.

The short story "A&P" by John Updike is about a group of three girls who enter an A&P grocery store in nothing but bathing suits. The male workers at the A&P grocery store are drawn to the looks of the three girls, Queenie in specific. One theme I saw present in the story was the power of aspiration. This theme is clearly seen through the power the three girls hold over the male workers at the A&P grocery store, especially Sammy. The three girls are aware of the sexual attraction the male workers are broadcasting through their constant stares; however, the girls are not acknowledging the male workers, which allows for the girls to hold the power of aspiration. The author conveys this theme through Lengel and Sammy's failed attempts to take this power of aspiration away from the girls.

In the opening scene with the jets, the orchestral background music painted the picture of the jets being spontaneous and unpredictable. The music especially designed their personalities well with the random loud burst of accented notes from the brass. The mood definitely changes

The beginning of the film opens up to the main characters struggling to make their rent. The rest of

The storyline jumps from one storyline to the next and presented in nonchronological order. Tarantino gives us bits and pieces of one story then jumps to another. This style of narrative is unusual. Ultimately, the whole story comes full circle. The opening scene ends where the scene began. We see the conclusion of the robbery and how it connects to the film.

This essay is based on films of the same story, told in different ways, with emphasis, themes, meaning and interpretation shaped or shaded by the situation of the storyteller; the cinematic mise-en-scene. Based on the same story, the films reveal and reflect the film-maker’s social norms and views, emerging from their different national contexts. While exploring the two films, this essay will examine elements of film language or semiotics: color saturation (or black and white), sound, setting, type of camera angles used; repetition of visual motifs (Metz, 1985). The two films explored were made in the 1960s. Neither film is American, yet both reveal influences and reflections on American cinema and American power; the Western film, adherence or detracting from Hollywood Classical cinema tropes, i.e. close-ups, shot-reverse-shot, POV, depth of field (Bazin, 1985: 128-9). The two films are Kurasawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964), from Japan and Italy, respectively. How are they different; how similar? Why do they use the same plot,