I first saw “Moonstruck” in the summer of 1987 with 2 friends who were in an on again, off again relationship. They quietly bickered before, during and after the film and as both had cheating fathers, they agreed on one thing – they hated the movie.
I loved it. From the first lovely, campy strains of Dino crooning “That’s Amore” to the joyous and ironic “Alla famiglia!” “To family!” toast and the pan through the family home to the proud ancestors’ tin type, I loved this movie.
There are many, many movies with great dialog but for me, Moonstruck outshines them all. What bride to be doesn’t dream of coming home to tell her family of her impending nuptials, to share a glass of champagne with her father and have this heartfelt conversation:
Pop: So what’s your news?
Loretta: I’m gettin’ married.
Pop: Again?
Loretta: Yeah.
Pop: You did this once; it didn’t work out.
Loretta: The guy died.
Pop: And what killed him?
Loretta: He got hit by a bus.
Pop: No! Bad luck! Your mother and I were married 52 years and nobody died. You were married what? 2 years and somebody’s dead. Don’t get married again, Loretta, it don’t work out for you.
I love the sheer richness of this movie – colors, textures, background of La Boheme, the lilt of the Brooklyn and first-generation Italian accents and oh, the expressions and gestures! Ronnie Cammareri’s range during his first scene with Loretta at the bakery oven… Describing the bad blood between him and Johnny in an oh-so-reasonable tone, “Yes, that’s it,” in answer to her question about the accidental loss of his hand being the cause.
Loretta: But that’s not Johnny’s fault.
Ronnie (his face stays in a calm, somehow earnest expression for a few seconds and then comes explosion; he whacks the flour sifter across the room and gets into Loretta’s face: I don’t care! I ain’t no freakin’ monument to justice! I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnnie has his hand! Johnny has his bride.! You want me to take my heartache, put it away and forget it?!
Another piece of the magic for me is that it uses the same device as the Wizard of Oz that starts out in Kansas in black and white, everything drab, everyone faded-looking. Then Dorothy wakes up in Oz in rich Technicolor. 48 years later, Loretta wears dowdy grays, black, white and her hair is put up in a frumpy bun and she wear wears no makeup or jewelry except her requisite tiny cross. She sends her brand-new fiancé off to Sicily with what appears to be their first kiss, sans heat, and hardly a flicker of emotion. Then a mere day later, after meeting and sleeping with the brother of her fiancé, she wakes up with her hair curling and streaming around her face, with Ronnie declaring he’s in love with her. After slapping his face (“Snap out of it!”), she agrees to meet him once more at The Met so that he will “give up the rest of his life” so they can “take this” (their tryst) “to their coffins.” Cher plays Loretta with such vulnerability as she unexpectedly stops on her way home to get her hair “done” (“Bellisima without those ugly grays…”), gives in to a makeover/manicure and buys the beautiful cocktail dress and shoes displayed in a shop window and after, enjoys a wolf whistle. The formerly dowdy Loretta, who loves flowers but cynically judges they will end up “as something that will go in the garbage” goes from eating fried eggs in the morning to dreamily sipping a rich Italian red, in her slip, with her new finery arrayed around her on the floor and jazz playing softly on the stereo.
Johnny metamorphizes as well, showing up at the fountain in front of Lincoln Center in a tuxedo and top coat, his hair slicked back to show his to-die-for cheekbones and “bad eyes, like a gypsy” as he waits and watches for her. Then the grandeur of The Met itself, with the gold leaf ceilings, crystal chandeliers and glorious Chagall murals continues the feeling of the journey into wonderful land of Oz. I don’t care how you feel about fine art, those murals described as “kinda gaudy” and “he was havin’ some fun” are priceless remarks.
Back to the would-be/wouldn’t-be couple I watched this with, the film’s comedy and poignancy comes largely from usually unromantic, unfunny themes of infidelity, faded dreams and outliving one’s friends and family. I get why my friends were turned off by the cheating aspect. Rose’s (Ma) plight as the wronged wife and taken-for-granted, no longer young mother should and does make me sad. And Grandpa’s feeling unloved and unwanted, with his 5 messy dogs, peeing on graves in the cemetery where he and his remaining old cronies pay respects to a lost friend and later, “Give those dogs another plate of my food, Old Man, and I’ll kick you til you’re dead” scenes should be tragic. And yet, they’re the flip side of the lire. For while Cosmo (Pop) cheats on Rose with Mona (“some cheap piece of goods…”), his family shames him but reminds him of his once deep but not yet gone, moonstruck love for Rose.
And Rose, the belle grande dame. When Vincent Gardenia and Cher awaken her with Loretta’s news, her lovely face with those beautiful, soulful eyes arrests you until she exclaims “Who’s dead?” And that’s Rose, her family is everything. Her pained sighs vividly illustrate her despair that “Cosmo’s cheatin’ on me” (no, Loretta, he’s not too old), that “your (Loretta’s) life is goin’ down the toilet!” (when Loretta sports love bites on her neck from her fiance’s brother the morning the fiancé returns from Italy), and “my father-in-law has this wrong idea in his head” (he mistakenly thinks Rose is cheating on Cosmo instead of the other way around). In a moving scene with the late John Mahoney, may his memory be for a blessing, Rose gets her edge back when a younger man flirts with her. During the scene, she asks him the question she asks every man she meets in her pain and confusion about her husband’s infidelity, “Why do men chase women?” Later, after walking her home, the man wrongly assumes that she can’t ask him in because there are people at home and she gets to deliver the forever memorable “No, I think the house is empty. I can’t invite you in because I’m married and because I know who I am.” I love that her husband’s betrayal hurts her but it doesn’t change her. When she finally gets her own answer confirmed by, of all people, the silly Johnny Cammareri (Loretta’s erstwhile fiancé), that “maybe men chase women because they fear death,” Rose is able to stop pining away for her husband’s love and confront him with his perfidy:
Rose: Cosmo, I just want you to know that no matter what you do, you’re going to die, just like everybody else.
Cosmo: Thank you, Rose!
In one of the final moving and subtly comic scenes, Rose asks Cosmo if she was a good wife and when he affirms “Yeah.”, she tells him “I want you to stop seeing her.” The expressions around the table are hysterical – confused, embarrassed, ironic – it’s a great moment. Cosmo stands, slams his hands down on the table, grips it dramatically and says “Okay.” Rose says “And go to confession!” Cosmo sits and bemoans that “One day a man understands that his life was built on nothin’ and that’s a bad, crazy day.” Rose denies that his life was built on nothin’ – “Ti amo!” and he blows her a kiss with obvious return of love.
There are so many quotable lines that I find uses for nearly every day:
“Tell him the truth, Loretta. They find out anyway,” Cosmo says after agreeing to stop seeing the cheap goods, Mona.
“Someone tell a joke!” Grandpa, in the awkward silence while everyone is waiting for Johnny Cammareri to show up when it’s obvious his brother, Ronnie, is now with Loretta.
“Why must I wait?”! Grandpa demands of his dog pack when trying to get them to howl at La Bella Luna.
“A wolf without a foot!” “A bride without a head!” (you just have to be there…)
I could probably quote the entire screenplay, with music queues, but I’m going to make myself stop now. I don’t know if I’ve conveyed at all why I love this movie so much. It makes me laugh; it makes me cry; it makes me glad to be alive to see it again and again. It’s as robust and filling as really good lasagna and as delicate yet rich as an authentic Fettuccini Alfredo with just the right amount of nutmeg and wisdom. I hope you see it and I hope you see it again and again.
Thanks for listening!
Speaking of Movies 