Romeo and Juliet on screen choreography by Jerome Robbins. Widely admired, and the winner of ten Oscars, the 1961 film of the show – set among New York gangs – does not aim for a realistic portrayal of New York gang culture: in the opening sequence the Jets and the Sharks trade dance-steps instead of blows. The Jets are a gang of white youths, equivalent to Shakespeare's Montagues; the Sharks, equivalent to the Capulets, are Puerto Rican. Unlike Shakespeare who included relationships between his young lovers and the older generation (the parents, and parent-substitutes such as the Nurse and Friar Laurence) "West Side Story" keeps
Romeo and Juliet on screen by including a nude wedding-night scene while Olivia Hussey was only fifteen. Nino Rota's Love Theme from the film, with the original lyrics (which had been drawn from several Shakespeare plays) replaced to become the song "A Time For Us", became a modest international chart hit. Australian director Baz Luhrmann's 1996 "Romeo + Juliet" and its accompanying soundtrack successfully targeted the "MTV Generation": a young audience of similar age to the story's characters. Far darker than Zeffirelli's version, the film is set in the "crass, violent and superficial society" of Verona Beach and Sycamore Grove. The visual conventions of the