Continuing my personal ranking of the 25 movie musicals deemed essential by the American Film Institute…
#23. West Side Story – 1961
(#2 on the AFI list)
I’ve written about a handful of these movies already, so in those cases I will just link to my original post. West Side Story represents the biggest gap between my ranking and AFI’s.
One of my quarantine resolutions has been to catch up with some of my classic movie blindspots. Movies I’ve never quite found the time to watch despite their reputations.
After watching a few very worthy classics (including Paths of Glory and The Night of the Hunter), I shifted my focus to musicals. Using AFI’s ‘100 Years of Musicals‘ list as a starting point, I’ve vowed to watch the 25 films that body deems as essential.
Using the very strictest definition, I had seen only five of those titles before embarking on this project. I’m discounting anything I might have seen when I was a child, because I have long since forgotten those experiences. I’m not even counting The Wizard of Oz, which I’m sure I’ve seen in full at some point in my life, but certainly not since I was a kid.
Meet Me In Montauk 