New Delhi, Feb. 13 -- Valentine's Day may be a crassly commercial invention, but any excuse to rhapsodize about a beloved romance is never wholly unwelcome. This week I choose to write about Norman Jewison's 1987 stunner, Moonstruck, streaming in India on Amazon Prime.

Moonstruck is a film of impossible rhythms. It breathes in Italian opera and exhales Brooklyn profanity, walking a tightrope between the banal and the enchanted-a romance both sincere and absurd, grandiose and grounded, swirling and strangely still. It may be, perhaps, the last great Hollywood fairytale-one that makes love in the moonlight while howling at the moon.

Jewison and the film's writer John Patrick Shanley understand love's contradictions. This film is full of p...