West-of-Florida story

The Verona project, part IX, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef

Who (how old), when, how long? Robert Wagner (22) and Terry Moore (23), 1953, 1¾hr.

What sort of R&J? Spongediving, and thoroughly unappealing (and in Wagner's case, about as convincingly Greek as Kirk Douglas a couple of years later in Ulysses).

Seriocomic scale for first scene? No equivalent scene; it's 17 minutes before the conflict is established between Greeks and "Conchs" (i.e., gen-u-wine Americans), another few minutes before the first confrontation, which is not at all comic but not at all threatening.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Not applicable.

Carrion flies? N.A.

Body count? One: Mike Petraikis (Gilbert Roland), father of Tony (the Romeo character, Wagner), dies from a serious case of the bends only indirectly attributable to the conflict.

What (else) is missing? Pretty much everything.

What (else) is changed? Pretty much everything, for the drabber.

What (else) is odd? Have you ever seen an octopus in an aquarium? No, you haven't, right? Because they're always hiding, right? Because they're scared shitless of us, right? So what inspires one to attack Tony here?

End-of-the-play exposition? Rather, end-of-the-play reconciliation of everyone w/ everyone else. Oh, golly, it's heartwarming.

There's precisely one thing interesting about this film: in 1953, four years before West Side Story opens on Broadway, we have at least the bare bones of the R&J story played as a turf war between "Americans" and immigrants--and the Romeo character is named Tony (actually Adonis here, Anton in the Laurents/Bernstein/Sondheim version). Oh, and there's a scene here where everyone makes nice when the cops come that is revived in the later incarnation.