beware of the past. I almost always approach mine on tiptoe and afraid of some surprise. The personal past keeps traces that usually go from the most noble to the most abject, all of them ordered according to their prize, their shame, their acceptance or their rejection. Opening the brain and activating memory are risky decisions. A light should warn you at the slightest movement: “It is dangerous to look inside.” There is no greater disappointment than returning, excited, to the book or movie that changed your life, and realizing that they do not keep anything that marked you at the time. It is good to accept, in these cases, that the prisms change over time. That “we, those of that time, are no longer the same”. Review, instead, the historical past, that of the time that you had to live and of which you only keep the memory of a few specific events (for the rest there are already, if necessary, the newspaper archives) it is much less risky; it is clear that in the ‘totum revolutum’ of shared events one feels much less exposed and vulnerable.
When steven spielberg announced his intention to shoot a new version of ‘West Side Story’ shot todes my alarms. The traffic light of memories turned amber, attentive to changing red or green depending on the result. Not in vain the movie Robert Wise occupies many bulky volumes of my sentimental memory. There was a time when I remembered with certainty the times I got to see it at the newly opened Aribau cinema in Barcelona. Now, not so reliably but with a lot of approximation, I could say that they were fifteen to twenty, in as many morning sessions throughout 1963. If we add to this another viewing for each year since then (television showings, Beta and VHS videos, LaserDisc, CD-Rom, BlueRay and various other already obsolete media), the addition gives a result close to eighty. It is, needless to say, The movie I’ve seen the most times in my life. Add to this the occasional enjoyment of the theatrical original and call me ‘freaky’ if you feel like it. I cannot (neither should nor want) to contradict them.
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With this backpack behind me, what to do with the new version of Spielberg? Resist me? Look for excuses? Delay the moment of meeting? Or, on the contrary, face the challenge and expose myself to disappointment – if there were any, it was possible – with a willing spirit? That is what I did. I entered the cinema with fear in my body, I confess. And I left, exultant. Because what seemed difficult, if not impossible, had been achieved: today’s ‘West Side Story’ is not only as good but even better, much better than back then. Said bluntly: Spielberg is a genius and his cinema is great. The film is as beautiful, emotional and gripping as Wise’s, but much more lively, tough, direct, radical and committed. A godsend for those of us who, like me, were in our twenties in the sixties.