Norman Jewison

In Moonstruck (1987), an ordinary conversation can become an argument about an entire life, with the everyday fuss still going on around it. Norman Jewison lets John Patrick Shanley’s characters speak extravagantly without making the film pompous. We value him for that generosity. He takes desire seriously without insisting that people in love behave sensibly. The foolish behaviour is part of what makes the romance convincing.

His early feature comedies led to the breakthrough of The Cincinnati Kid (1965), followed by In the Heat of the Night (1967). The split screens of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) show a director prepared to make the cutting noticeable. Then came the musicals Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), before the later return to romantic comedy with Moonstruck. The warmth of that later film should not obscure his willingness to try a different way of putting images together.

But Moonstruck gives us a particularly clear view of how well he can manage performers with different instincts. Cher’s steadiness makes Nicolas Cage’s anguish funny before Shanley has supplied a joke. We laughed at the contrast because she gives his agitation something firm to push against. Jewison allows the dialogue to be grand without losing the sense of people dealing with each other at close quarters. His attention to the older lovers also gives the family scenes a life beyond servicing the main romance.

Cage’s Ronny Cammareri also exposes the weakness in this approach. He sometimes pushes the anguish so hard that we start noticing the effort instead of believing the feeling, and Jewison lets him. The performance suits a story about surrendering caution, but there are moments when less insistence would make the desire more persuasive. Cher gives the film the steadiness it needs to accommodate him, which makes casting an important part of Jewison’s achievement here. Start with Moonstruck for the family scenes; a little patience with the shouting is required.