From Young Person's Concerts to West Side Story: Celebrating the Centennial of Leonard Bernstein at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival

Leonard and Jamie / Photograph from Bettmann / Getty

Leonard Bernstein didn't leave the mark he intended.

Conductor, pianist, teacher, television personality, cultural ambassador: Bernstein* (1918-1990) was all of these things and more. But he longed to be best known as a composer. That was the revelation that struck me the most while watching Leonard Bernstein: Larger Than Life, Centerpiece selection of the 24th annual Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

At a public TV-like 52 minutes, this 2016 documentary from German director Georg Wübbolt (Herbert von Karajan: Maestro for the Screen, Solti: Journey of a Lifetime) can't hope to cover every aspect of Bernstein's life, and it doesn't, but his desire to be more--or somewhat different--than he was comes across clearly. And yet, as one unidentified speaker notes, "Leonard Bernstein lived five lives during the short time he was on our planet."

A lengthier profile might have also explored his complicated private life, provided more context about the classical scene of his era, and taken a closer look at the physicality of his conducting. When Bernstein led orchestras, his body vibrated as his hair took flight, his mouth made strange shapes, and his arms slashed through the air like a samurai on overdrive.

At Tanglewood / Heinz Weissenstein / BSO

Unfortunately, the screener I watched didn't identify any of the speakers or provide subtitles for those speaking in German, including Bernstein (he also spoke Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, and Italian), so I didn't get everything out of it I could. I appreciated, for instance, the story about how he wanted to be loved by everybody. "That's not possible," composer Ned Rorem said. "Well, that's my tragedy," Bernstein replied, but I couldn't say who conveyed that exchange, because he isn't identified, though even casual music fans may recognize composer Stephen Sondheim and conductors Kent Nagano and Gustavo Dudamel. 

Fortunately, subtitles are sure to accompany this Sunday's screening at the Stroum Center. Better yet, Bernstein's daughter, author Jamie Bernstein (Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein), will be in attendance to help fill in the blanks. Former Seattle Times theater critic Misha Berson (Something's Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination) will moderate their conversation. Bernstein will also be at the post-screening reception to sign books, which will be on sale at the event. In The New Yorker, David Denby, notes that her book is "unique among classical-music memoirs for its physical intimacy, its humor and tenderness, its ambivalence toward an irrepressible family genius."



If, as he feared, Bernstein is better known as a conductor than a composer, he wasn't exactly a slouch in that department. West Side Story, on which he collaborated with Sondheim, opened on Broadway in 1957, led to an Oscar-winning 1961 film, and will find new life by way of Steven Spielberg's upcoming remake, which begins filming this summer--in addition to numerous Broadway revivals and regional stagings. Other notable composing credits include the scores for the Broadway musicals On the Town, Wonderful Town, and Candide and the film On the Waterfront.  

Furthermore, his work lives on in ways that he couldn't have predicted, like the six Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra pieces by Benjamin Britten and Camille Saint-Saëns that Wes Anderson combined with Alexandre Desplat's score for 2012's youth-centric Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson even includes the sound of Bernstein's deep, nicotine-burnished voice). For many film goers, these New York Philharmonic pieces may have marked their introduction to Bernstein--and to classical music in general.

In addition, Bradley Cooper has decided on a biopic, Bernstein, as his directorial followup to A Star Is Born (naturally, he cast himself in the lead). If Leonard Bernstein didn't leave the mark he intended, it seems like a safe bet that he won't be any more forgotten in the 22nd century than he is now.

*Bernstein, who was born in 1918, would have turned 101 this August, and not 100, but Centennial Plus One just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Leonard Bernstein: Larger Than Life plays Stroum Jewish Community Center, 3801 E. Mercer Way on Mercer Island, on Sunday, March 31, at 4pm. Pre-sale tickets are sold out, but there will be a standby line. This year's SJFF opened on March 23 and runs through April 7 (after taking a break between April 1 and April 5). For more information, please click here.