Moonstruck (1987)
Directed by Norman Jewison
37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Johnny, even though she doesn't love him. When she meets his estranged younger brother Ronny, an emotional and passionate man, she finds herself drawn to him. She tries to resist, but Ronny, who blames his brother for the loss of his hand, has no scruples about aggressively pursuing her while Johnny is out of the country. As Loretta falls for Ronny, she learns that she's not the only one in her family with a secret romance.
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Sparks fly, of course, and before long Ronny and Loretta share a bed and a date to see La Bohème.
Musically, "Moonstruck" is built around "La Boheme," whose themes we see and hear at every turn.
…n line with the conceit that it's something like an opera, the original cut of "Moonstruck" opened with music from "La Boheme."
Jewison captures some of the same qualities of Ingmar Bergman ’s “ Smiles of a Summer Night ,” in which nature itself conspires with lovers to bring about their happiness.
Some of these moments are so charged with tension they remind us of the great opening scenes of “ Saturday Night Fever ” (and the mother from that movie, Julie Bovasso , is on hand here, as an aunt).
Stylistically at his best in his two famous 1960's quasi-realist thrillers, "In the Heat of the Night" and "The Thomas Crown Affair," he had more difficulty on two engaging but awkward 1970s musicals, "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Fiddler on the Roof."
(Director Jewison, who later made Fiddler on the Roof, Moonstruck, and The Hurricane , is a Canadian.)
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Those talents are a new-to-the-screen writer, John Patrick Shanley, a first-generation Irish-American playwright from the Bronx, and veteran Norman Jewison, a Canadian director who has made loftier films ("Agnes of God," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "A Soldier's Story") but never a niftier one.
Stylistically at his best in his two famous 1960's quasi-realist thrillers, "In the Heat of the Night" and "The Thomas Crown Affair," he had more difficulty on two engaging but awkward 1970s musicals, "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Fiddler on the Roof."
He's made classics like "The Cincinnati Kid" and comedies like "Best Friends," but who could have imagined he had this reach -- that he could catch moonbeams?
Working on the recommendation of the aforementioned Mr. Connery, director Norman Jewison was absolutely correct to cast Russian-born octogenarian Feodor Chaliapin, Jr. ("The Name of the Rose") as the Castorini family's often silent patriarch, dog walker, and occasional Greek chorus.
Those talents are a new-to-the-screen writer, John Patrick Shanley, a first-generation Irish-American playwright from the Bronx, and veteran Norman Jewison, a Canadian director who has made loftier films ("Agnes of God," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "A Soldier's Story") but never a niftier one.