Shared director Oscar

The first film for which two directors shared a Best Director Oscar was West Side Story. Jerome Robbins directed the heavily choreographed dance and fight scenes, while Robert Wise did the non-musical scenes. The film also won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris), and Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno), and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Lehman).

Teenagers Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) meet at a dance and fall in love at first sight. Problem is, Tony's best friend, Riff (Russ Tamblyn), is the leader of the street gang The Jets, and Maria's brother, Bernardo (Chakiris), is the leader of rival street gang The Sharks. Adding to the difficulty, Tony is white and Maria is Puerto Rican, and they live in a time of racial intolerance. Their troubles intensify when the gang rivalry escalates into a deadly brawl.

Romeo and Juliet, retold as a feud between New York City street gangs. In the form of a highly choreographed musical, where dances look like brawls, and brawls look like dancing. Sounds like kind of a train wreck, right? But consider the time it was filmed, and the subject matter. Shot in 1961, in the middle of the civil rights movement, the film focuses on the rivalry between the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. The love story is actually the weakest part of the film - Beymer doesn't have much going in terms of personality, and Wood is about as Puerto Rican as apple pie. The film wisely makes their story more of a subplot, and pays more attention to the gang rivalry, through which it has a lot to say about race relations and about the plight of the urban working-class teenager. If you are in the right mood, and if you can get past the fact that these supposedly tough street gangs are introduced via dancing, then you will find a movie that is surprisingly entertaining, funny, meaningful, and contemporary.

Movie trivia question: Of the past 40 years, what is the only Best Picture winner that I have not yet seen? Admittedly, not a fair question, but it's not like the guesses have been pouring in from my readers on my previous questions.