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West Side Story poster

Movies that feel likeWest Side Story (1961)

In Manhattan’s Upper West Side, rival gangs of Polish-Americans and newly arrived Puerto Ricans clash for control of the neighborhood, even as two young members from opposite sides fall dangerously in love.

If you loved West Side Story, the closest films we have are Pierrot le Fou (1965), On the Waterfront (1954) and Badlands (1973). All three share West Side Story's gritty and contemplative feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Black Orpheus (1959).

🍅 92% Rotten Tomatoes★ 7.6 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Jerome Robbinsgrittycontemplativeromantictender
11 of 12 streaming nowHBO Max · Criterion Channel

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If West Side Story hit the spot, these will too

Pierrot le Fou poster
Pierrot le Fou
1965 · dir. Jean-Luc Godard
🍅 88%★ 7.4drama · romance · crimeMax

Gritty where it counts, contemplative underneath

Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.

On the Waterfront poster
On the Waterfront
1954 · dir. Elia Kazan
🍅 99%★ 8.1crime · drama · romance

Both land romance and tenderness at once

A prizefighter-turned-longshoreman with a conscience goes up against labor leaders to expose corruption, extortion, and murder among the union ranks.

Badlands poster
Badlands
1973 · dir. Terrence Malick
🍅 97%★ 7.7drama · romance · crime

Crime built on grit, twice over

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.

Port of Shadows poster
Port of Shadows
1938 · dir. Marcel Carné
🍅 97%★ 7.7romance · drama · crime

Drama with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

The difference: Made in the 1930s, in a different era of the craft

Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean, an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, as acts of both revenge and kindness render him front-page news.

Splendor in the Grass poster
Splendor in the Grass
1961 · dir. Elia Kazan
🍅 75%★ 7.7drama · romance

One thread runs through both: forbidden love

The difference: Takes it somewhere less gritty than West Side Story does

A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.

Days of Being Wild poster
Days of Being Wild
1990 · dir. Wong Kar-Wai
🍅 91%★ 7.4crime · drama · romanceMax

Both lean on romance more than on romance

Yuddy, a Hong Kong playboy known for breaking girls' hearts, tries to find solace and truth after discovering the woman who raised him isn't his mother.

As Tears Go By poster
As Tears Go By
1988 · dir. Wong Kar-Wai
🍅 85%★ 7drama · crime · romanceMax

Tender crime, and it commits to that

Mid-level gangster Wah falls in love with his beautiful cousin, but must also continue to protect his volatile partner-in-crime and friend, Fly.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg poster
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
1964 · dir. Jacques Demy
🍅 97%★ 7.8drama · romanceMax

The same preoccupation in both: musical

This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher, a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery, an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant.

The Silence poster
The Silence
1963 · dir. Ingmar Bergman
🍅 85%★ 7.7drama · romance

Contemplative drama in both cases

Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.

Contempt poster
Contempt
1963 · dir. Jean-Luc Godard
🍅 92%★ 7.4drama · romance

From the 1960s, and it lands the same way

Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

Black Orpheus poster
Black Orpheus
1959 · dir. Marcel Camus
🍅 88%★ 7.4drama · romanceMax

Tender drama, and it commits to that

Young lovers Orfeu and Eurydice run through the favelas of Rio during Carnaval, on the lam from a hitman dressed like Death and Orfeu's vengeful fiancée Mira and passing between moments of fantasy and stark reality. This impressionistic retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice introduced bossa nova to the world with its soundtrack by young Brazilian composers Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Better Days poster
Better Days
2019 · dir. Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung
🍅 97%★ 7.6drama · crime · romanceRent or buy

Gritty crime, and it commits to that

A bullied teenage girl forms an unlikely friendship with a mysterious young man who protects her from her assailants, while she copes with the pressures of her final examinations.

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The best-reviewed films that share West Side Story’s defining feeling.