FOr for an astonishing 50 years, Norman Jewison's filmmaking was at the heart of Hollywood drama. He could do it all and liven up the movie with his idealism, confidence, and style. Jewison has produced an extraordinary number of masterpieces and hits. For half the time movie theaters have existed, the Norman Jewison was the gold standard of movie night.
In the 1960s, he starred in his slinky Doris Day comedies and the sexy Steve McQueen thriller capers “The Cincinnati Kid'' and “The Thomas Crown Affair,'' starring Sidney Poitier as a black cop in the American South. The unconventional “Incident on a Hot Night'' was seen. In the 1970s, his Broadway masterpiece “Fiddler on the Roof'' was staged, portraying Tevye, a dairy farmer who stoically and humorously confronts the disobedience of his daughters and the pogroms of anti-Semites in pre-revolutionary Ukraine. Topol gave an iconic performance. Jewison followed Lloyd Webber's musical Jesus Christ Superstar, and in the same decade! – The acidic satire of the futuristic dystopia Rollerball, the union-busting drama Fist starring Sylvester Stallone, and the Al Pacino-screaming legal thriller And Justice for All. The whole trial has gone crazy! In the 1980s, Jewison was brought into the spotlight again in The Soldier's Tale, in which Howard E. Rollins played an African-American officer sent to investigate a murder at an army base. “Agnes of God'' also became an influential mystery thriller.
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Jewison ended the decade with “Moonstruck,” one of the most famous romantic comedies ever made, but in the '90s, he turned his attention to the epic blockbuster that satirized greed is good. followed by “Other People's Money,'' and then switched to another romantic comedy. Following “Only You,” starring Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr., “Hurricane” stars Denzel Washington as the wrongly imprisoned boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. and returned to muscular, issue-driven work in The Hurricane, directed by Michael Caine, about the shadowy Paul Touvier, a fugitive Vichy collaborator wanted for war crimes. statement.
The body of work is astonishing, and Jewison's masterful direction helped shape many of the postwar Hollywood films. Before the rise of the '60s, he gave us Doris Day and Rock Hudson with the style that would later become chic in Mad Men, and later gave us the stylish style of gambler, adventurer, and thief artist Steve McQueen. Invented presence and carried out his work. Boldly escape in a funky split-screen arena with zeitgeist cool. Then, at the end of the decade, Jewison took up the subject of racism and directed the film, In the Heat of Night, starring Sidney Poitier as a black homicide detective who helps a bigoted white cop played by Rod Steiger. I acted out the slap that was heard in the movie. Slaps back at the racists who slap him. This is a great mainstream issue movie of the kind that will probably seem solid to some, but is a masterclass in character-driven drama and action.
Fiddler on the Roof is probably my favorite Jewish movie. It's amazing how this production so happily harnesses the energy of Broadway, centering Topol's commanding and endearing performance so strongly and confidently (indeed, the 36-year-old doesn't really seem that way). He was older than Paul Michael Glaser (who later found fame as TV cop Starsky, who played Topol's Bolshevik radical son-in-law Perchik). Isaac Stern's violin, playing as “Fiddler” on the soundtrack, brings the film to life, and Jewison brings to this film what David Lean had in Doctor Zhivago: the energy and breadth of the storytelling. giving to the movie. The huge success of Fiddler on the Roof earned Jewison the director's job on Jesus Christ Superstar. This superstar was a rock 'n' roll crowd-pleaser that sold millions of soundtrack LPs in an era before VHS home entertainment. Then again, like Fiddler on the Roof, it wasn't necessarily popular during that heady era of American new wave. But Jewison could turn his hand to the fashionable and the unfashionable alike. He could find that pulse and energy in any film project.
My second favorite Jewison movie is the brilliant romance Moonstruck. With his Italian-American schmaltzer, people go crazy and get drunk on love when the moon hits their eyes like a giant pizza pie. It sounds sweet on paper, and maybe it is, but it's easily charming, funny, and unexpectedly sensual.
Jewison made Cher a star, or at least brought out the great latent stardom in her (she won an Oscar – Jewison was nominated but didn't win). He also develops one of the most deeply beloved characters in Nicolas Cage's OTT performance, playing a disgruntled bakery assistant who falls in love with Cher's shy widow and Cage's bored older brother. He has already accepted the solemn proposal of marriage, after which he must go to Sicily. On the deathbed of a dying mother. It's all too common these days to worry about the “compatibility” of leading players, but under Jewison's astute direction, Cher and Cage had Krakatoa-level chemistry. That meant determining the exact amount of gory comedy to match the passion, but it also meant letting the passion run its course if that was the point. His romantic comedies rarely include sexy elements, but Jewison brings some steamy vibes when Cage angrily knocks over Cher's kitchen table and then the two go to bed.
Perhaps Norman Jewison himself was the fiddler on the roof of American cinema for 50 years, calling the tunes, setting the rhythm, setting the mood, but drawing attention to the principal actors who quietly came down to earth. It has brought glory. But what a master he is.
