“Moonstruck” has you under its spell from the moment you hear Dean Martin intone “That’s Amore” while you see moonlit scenes of New York. Keep an eye out for one of the clues to the magic spell this movie gem puts on you and that hard to describe quality you feel as you watch it. The Metropolitan Opera is getting ready for a performance – the marquee is being put up – and there’s a truck delivering sets for “La Boheme.” Director Norman Jewison is setting up the stage for a tale with heightened emotions. And he lets us know that all the world’s a stage – that operatic feelings will be on display – and we’re the audience. This will be of course a tale of love, passion and of family. Loretta Castorini agrees to marry a mamma’s boy – Johnny – only to fall in love with his estranged brother Ronny.
There’s a bittersweet feeling in “Moonstruck.” All of the characters seem to be longing for something that to them feels unattainable. Loretta (Cher) feels cursed after her husband dies and is willing to marry Johnny whom she doesn’t love. Her mother – Rose- knows Loretta’s father is cheating on her for he’s fearing death. Ronny (Johnny’s brother) lost his arm for he was distracted and is cursing at the heavens – in very dramatic ways. A womanizing professor who only dates younger women will connect with Rose in an unexpected way. And Loretta’s father will take his dissatisfied date to the Met and run into his daughter. Like characters in an opera each of them has a very specific theme – and will openly express their feelings. The moon – working as a deus ex machina – will bathe all characters and bring clarity to each and every one of them – old grudges, curses and feuds will be cleared. Playwright John Patrick Shanley (who won the Oscar for his screenplay) sets all these different couples in motion under this moon – and it’s all beautifully structured. Jewison never lets you forget you’re watching something bigger than life – notice the fairy tale quality in the way Loretta is transformed. She literally walks into the “Cinderella” beauty shop for her make over.
It is essential – that all the characters unite at the end of the movie and resolve their issues around the kitchen table. It’s an extraordinary resolution – that brings the audience such catharsis. We all long for all of our deeply heartfelt desires to be heard and to be appeased and what better way for it to happen than to be surrounded by family? Pay attention at the end how director Jewison theatrically pulls the camera away from the kitchen table into the rest of the house and eventually settles on a family photo.
Cher deservedly won the Oscar for Best Actress and Olympia Dukakis as Rose won Best Supporting. Yet the whole cast is impeccable. It’s my favorite Nicolas Cage performance. He takes risks and they all pay off. No matter how many times you’ve seen it, check it again. It’s irresistible and it will make you laugh, cry – and make you feel very warm inside.
Ronny: “Yeah. Everything seems like nothing to me now against I want you in my bed. I don’t care if I burn in hell. I don’t care if you burn in hell. The Past and the Future is a joke to me now. I see that they’re nothin’. I see they ain’t here. The only thing that’s here is you – and me…Come upstairs. I don’t care why you come. No, that’s not what I mean. Loretta, I love you. Not, not like they told you love is and I didn’t know this either. But love don’t make things nice, it ruins everything! It breaks your heart, it makes things a mess. We, we aren’t here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect, stars are perfect. Not us! Not US! We are here to ruin ourselves and, and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and, and die! I mean that the storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and, and get in my bed. Come on, come on, come on.”
Love,
Roger
Available to stream on fuboTV and to rent on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Written by John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Norman Jewison
Starring: Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis and Danny Aiello
102 minutes
About Director Norman Jewison
“After joining the navy in 1944, Jewison went on to school at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1950. Norman began his career in show business at the BBC, as there were no opportunities for him in Canada at that time. But after a couple of grueling years writing in Britain, he felt it was time to come home. He enrolled in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s training program. Before long, Jewison was directing and producing shows for “Wayne and Shuster.” He then rescued CBS’ failing “Your Hit Parade” and produced “The Fabulous Fifties” for which he also won an Emmy in 1960. From his first film, “Forty Pounds of Trouble” (1963), the Toronto native went on to establish himself as one of the true visionaries of his time. Jewison’s “In the Heat of the Night” (1967) won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actor. His films have earned 45 Academy Award nominations and 12 Oscars, cementing Jewison as one of the world’s best directors. Though he considers himself a farmer who occasionally makes films, his dedication to Canadian filmmaking is unbeatable. In 1988 he established the Canadian Film Centre to promote and advance the artistic, technical, and business skills of Canada’s film and television community. His highly acclaimed films such as “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” (1966), “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971) and “Moonstruck” (1987) have made a distinctive and important mark on film history.” (Canada’s Walk of Fame)
The Making of Moonstruck
“The language certainly attracted me to the project–I like to call Shanley ‘The Bard of the Bronx.’ ” Shanley is an Irish-American who grew up chockablock with the borough’s Italo-Americans and their folkways. Best known as an off-Broadway playwright (“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea”), he turned to movies with “Five Corners,” written, like “Moonstruck,” on spec, and filmed under Tony Bill’s direction.“And,” Jewison continued, “I was drawn to the people, who are so beautifully rounded.” A reading of the script suggests that Jewison’s praise isn’t just interviewese. For example, the “supporting” character of Cosmo Castorini (Cher’s father, played by Vincent Gardenia of “Little Shop of Horrors”) is seen alternately as dad, husband, philanderer and businessman. “But what really interested me,” the director said, “is the central idea of betrayal, which, now that I think of it, has figured in a lot of my films”–“The Thomas Crown Affair” and “A Soldier’s Story,” for instance. “Loretta (Cher) falls in love with Ronnie (Cage), who is the brother of her fiance (Danny Aiello); Cosmo is betraying Rose (his wife, played by Olympia Dukakis) by stepping out with Mona (Anita Gillette); Rose walks home with Prof. Perry (John Mahoney) and kisses him good night. “And all of this seems to be out of the characters’ control. They’re all affected by la luna –there’s a full moon hanging over Manhattan and Brooklyn.” And lest this be taken only as an operatic-poetic conceit, the compact, sensible 60-year-old director is quick to point out: “I’m a farmer, so I know the moon affects animals.” The Canadian native raises cattle on a spread outside Toronto, where “Moonstruck’s” studio interiors were wrapped recently. “And I think the moon affects humans to a greater extent than most of us recognize.” (The Los Angeles Times)
Casting Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck
“Cher and I both admired Nicolas’ work in ‘Peggy Sue Got Married,’ ” said Jewison, “but the main reason she felt he was right for the part is because, like the character of Ronnie, Nicolas struck her as a tormented soul.” “I was attracted to the romantic element in ‘Moonstruck’ because I think I am a romantic,” Cage said, in explaining why he took the part. “There haven’t been that many great romantic films–‘The Graduate’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ come to mind–and I think we need more of them. Even though romance isn’t always a fun thing to go through, the things men and women experience through each other are utterly mystical and illusive. “Ultimately, ‘Moonstruck’ is a happy family film for an ensemble of actors rather than a purely romantic movie,” he said, “and I think it frustrated Norman that I leaned towards interpreting it as a desperately romantic Beauty and the Beast fable. I didn’t change my character from the way it was written, but I did try to play up the wolfish part of Ronnie’s personality.” “Nicolas did have a darker interpretation of Ronnie than I did,” said Jewison, “but we both agreed that a poetic quality was central to the character. When Ronnie is first introduced in the film he’s in a basement slaving over hot ovens and he almost has the quality of a young Lord Byron. “Then, as the film progresses Nicolas blossoms into a classic romantic leading man–and I think this is the first film where he’s come off this way,” Jewison continues. “There’s one sequence in particular that’s a sort of blue-collar recreation of Romeo & Juliet’s balcony scene where Nicolas has the gangling, vulnerable appeal of a young Jimmy Stewart. Like Stewart, he has a natural gift–those large eyes and that big head are just great for film.”
(The Los Angeles Times)