My eight year old son recently caught West Side Story on TV in England one afternoon. Had no knowledge of it whatsoever.
When the camera closed in on the Jets, totally still, snapping their fingers, he said, "That's creepy."
From then on he was hooked. No sense that the film was dated or boring - during the physical hijinx of "Gee Officer Krupke" he squealed with delight, he couldn't believe anyone could do such flips and so on.
He and his sister became absorbed. When we had to go out (after all, we were on holiday and London beckoned out the door!), he was keen to see the end of the story when we returned home.
It was fascinating to see the movie through fresh eyes; in many ways he "got" the show better than I ever did, raised as I was to it many years ago through the record, and people talking about it, and reading about it before finally seeing it. |
