Moonstruck

Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini works as a bookkeeper and lives in Brooklyn Heights with her parents Cosmo and Rose and her paternal grandfather. Loretta's boyfriend, Johnny Cammareri, proposes to her before leaving for Sicily to tend to his dying mother. Loretta accepts. She insists on following tradition as she believes failing to do so led to her first husband's sudden death after two years of marriage.

Johnny asks Loretta to invite his estranged younger brother Ronny to the wedding. Ronny and Johnny have not spoken in five years. Cosmo, who runs a successful plumbing business, dislikes Johnny and is reluctant to pay for a formal wedding. Rose is relieved that Loretta is not in love with Johnny. She warns that the men women love can hurt them the most.

Loretta visits Ronny at the bakery. Ronny refuses to attend the wedding. He was engaged once, and his fiancée left him after he lost his hand in a bread slicer. Ronny blames Johnny for causing the accident by distracting him. Loretta is persistent and cooks Ronny a steak at his apartment. She explains that Ronny is like a wolf who gnaws off its own paw to escape a trap. The accident was not Johnny's fault. Ronny was simply escaping a bad relationship. Ronny reacts furiously and passionately, kissing Loretta. Ronny carries Loretta to his bed where they have sex.

Cosmo and Rose have a family dinner and wonder where Loretta is. Rose's brother Raymond remembers when Cosmo was courting his sister and a giant moon woke him up. He blamed Cosmo, because he thought Cosmo brought the moon to their house.

Loretta feels guilty about her affair. Ronny promises to never bother her again if she goes to the Met with him. Loretta goes to confession. She impulsively decides to get her hair done and buys an outfit for the opera.

At the Met, Giacomo Puccini's La bohème deeply moves Loretta. Meanwhile, Rose dines alone at a local restaurant. Loretta sees her father Cosmo with his mistress Mona. She confronts him, but he points out that she is with Johnny's brother. They agree to keep their encounter a secret.

Rose witnesses New York University professor Perry get dumped by one of his students. He joins her for dinner. After the opera, Ronny leads Loretta back to his apartment and desperately persuades her to ruin herself with him.

Perry walks Rose home, but she refuses his advances because she knows who she is. Johnny Cammareri surprises Rose at the house. She asks him why men cheat, and they surmise it must be a fear of death.

When Loretta returns home in the morning, she is distressed to learn Johnny is back. Ronny arrives, and Rose invites him inside. At breakfast, Rose demands Cosmo end his affair and go to confession. They reaffirm their love for each other.

Johnny arrives and explains he cannot marry Loretta because it would kill his mother. Loretta is furious and throws Johnny's ring at him. Ronny borrows it to ask Loretta to marry him. She agrees and everyone toasts their engagement.

Sally Field admired John Patrick Shanley's work and invited him to lunch at the Russian Tea Room to discuss a collaboration. He wrote a screenplay for her that he called The Bride and the Wolf. Shanley promised Field it would earn her an Oscar nomination, but she had a hard time picturing herself as an Italian from Brooklyn. Because his plays were frequently compared to operas, Shanley started going to the Metropolitan Opera. He was particularly drawn to Giacomo Puccini's La bohème and wrote the character of Ronny as a bohemian.^{[5]: 160, 172f}

The script made its way to Norman Jewison who loved it, but insisted on a name change because the title sounded like a horror film.^[5] He got Shanley to cut out most of the dialogue and pitched it to Alan Ladd Jr. and John Goldwyn when they were in Canada for the 1986 Toronto film festival. Jewison's pitch included Cher in the lead role. Like Field, she also balked over the Brooklyn Italian nature of the role, given that she was neither.^[6]

When Jewison pitched the role to Cher, she warned him that she could be difficult. He replied, "Are you any more difficult than Judy Garland?"^[5]: 161 He also warned her that she would spend the rest of her life regretting turning down the role. He cast the rest of the roles as if the movie were an opera, "Loretta is the soprano. Rose is the alto, Johnny is the baritone, Ronnie the tenor, Cosmo the bass."^[6]

Ronny Cammareri was the same age as Loretta Castorini in the script. Ray Liotta auditioned, but Jewison dismissed him as too young. Raul Julia, John Turturro, and Al Pacino were all considered for the role. It finally came down to Peter Gallagher and Nicolas Cage. The chemistry between Cher and Cage was obvious on the screen tests.^[5]: 162f Cher admired the risk Cage took with his Gumby accent in Peggy Sue Got Married. While she liked Gallagher, she concluded, "Nicky was nuts, and 'nuts' is what we needed."^[7]: 231

After the death of his cousin Gian-Carlo Coppola, Cage was at a low point and turning down work. He disliked the mainstream sensibility of Shanley's script. He was far more interested in accepting Vampire's Kiss, but his agent Ed Limato forbade it unless he agree to do Moonstruck. Ronny Cammareri's wooden hand was what ultimately hooked Cage on the role.^{[5]: 162–5} He wanted to replicate the moment in Fritz Lang's Metropolis when Rotwang holds up a robot hand that he invented.^[8] Cage saw the character as analogous to the beast in Beauty and the Beast. He emulated Jean Marais' voice from Jean Cocteau's 1946 film until Jewison talked him out of it.^[9]

Most of the filming took place in Toronto in early 1987.^[5]: 176 Jewison described the final scene as the most difficult to film in his entire career.^[4] Julie Bovasso was the production's dialect coach and helped Cher master a Brooklyn accent in a few weeks.^[6] While filming the final scene, she urged Cage to speak louder and faster, prompting him to throw a chair.^[10]

Cammareri Brothers Bakery was located in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.^[11] Ronny and Loretta were scripted to meet upstairs, but when Jewison saw the coal ovens in the basement, he relocated the scene.^[5]: 168f

The light of the giant moon was designed by cinematographer David Watkin, who clustered parabolic aluminized reflectors into giant fay lights that lit up Brooklyn.^[6][12] Ronny's climactic speech after the opera was filmed in freezing temperatures. The script's vestigial verbosity called for Ronny to describe himself as red meat and his brother as milk and cookies. Cage had to be convinced to say the lines, which ended up being cut from the film. Shanley concluded that actors "know what fits in their mouth and what doesn’t."^[5]: 170f

Jewison took the cast to see La bohème in order to get them in an operatic frame of mind.^[13] Puccini's "O soave fanciulla" plays during Ronny and Loretta's love scene. The film includes eleven other cues from La bohème.^[14] During the actual scene at the Metropolitan Opera, Cher and Cage were looking at an empty stage as a recording played and Jewison summarized the plot of Puccini's opera.^[7]: 231

Puccini's music scored the opening of the film's original cut. Audiences at test screenings did not view the film as a comedy, and Jewison realized the operatic score was setting the wrong tone.^[4] When the opening music was replaced with Dean Martin's "That's Amore", audiences laughed along to the entire movie.^[5]: 173f

In 2001, Nicolas Cage's production company Saturn Films began work on a Moonstruck sequel called The Seven Fishes. The project fizzled out. John Patrick Shanley mused that if he wrote Moonstruck II it would be about Ronny trying to win Loretta back after their divorce.^[5]: 179f.

In June 2008, AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Moonstruck was acknowledged as the eighth best film in the romantic comedy genre.^[40][41] The film is also number 72 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies," and number 41 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #41^[42]
• 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #17^[43]
• 2005: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • Loretta Castorini: "Snap out of it!" – #96^[44]
• 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:
  • #8 Romantic Comedy Film^[45]

Influential film critic Roger Ebert entered the film to his "Great Movies" collection in June 2003.^[46] In 2006, Writers Guild of America West ranked its screenplay 62nd in WGA’s list of 101 Greatest Screenplays.^[47]

Moonstruck was released on VHS and LaserDisc in 1988 following its theatrical release. It was released on DVD in 1998. It was released on Blu-ray by MGM on February 15, 2011.^[48] The Criterion Collection released a remastered Blu-ray on November 17, 2020.^[49]

^{Soundtrack references: [50][51]}