‘Moonstruck’ remains a screen romance like no other
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Valentine’s Day may be a crassly commercial invention, but any excuse to rhapsodize about a beloved romance is never wholly unwelcome. This week I choose to write about Norman Jewison’s 1987 stunner, Moonstruck, streaming in India on Amazon Prime.
Moonstruck is a film of impossible rhythms. It breathes in Italian opera and exhales Brooklyn profanity, walking a tightrope between the banal and the enchanted—a romance both sincere and absurd, grandiose and grounded, swirling and strangely still. It may be, perhaps, the last great Hollywood fairytale—one that makes love in the moonlight while howling at the moon.
Jewison and the film’s writer John Patrick Shanley understand love’s contradictions. This film is full of people who are both weary and wide-eyed, longing for stability yet driven mad by passion. Consider Cher’s Loretta Castorini, a 37-year-old Italian-American widow from Brooklyn who works as a bookkeeper and feels cursed with bad luck.
She has measured out her life in careful steps, accepting a proposal from the safe, dithering Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello), a man she does not love but who, at least, does not threaten her. And yet, the moment she meets Johnny’s estranged brother, Ronny—played with ferocious intensity by Nicolas Cage—she is swept into something untamed. Cher’s performance is a marvel of command and clarity.
This is a romance about awareness, about waking up. Loretta is a woman who understands how the world works, pragmatic about money, family, and duty, but she has yet to see herself clearly. She wears her widowhood like a mask, her hair in a tight bun, her love life in a state of bureaucratic settlement.
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