Movie Review: 'Fiddler on the Roof'

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

Directed by: Norman Jewison

Written by: Joseph Stein, based on his book for the Broadway play and Sholem Aleichem’s Teyve and His Daughters

Starring: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Molly Picon, Paul Mann

Music by: Jerry Bock (original music), Sheldon Harnick (lyrics), John Williams (adapted the score and conducted)

Tevye: A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask 'Why do we stay up there if it's so dangerous?' Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!

On November 3. 1971, United Artists released producer-director Norman Jewison’s Fiddler on the Roof, an adaptation of the eponymous Broadway musical written by Joseph Stein and based loosely on Sholem Aleichem’s story Teyve and His Daughters. Filmed in England (interiors) and Yugoslavia (exteriors), Fiddler on the Roof closely follows the plot of the 1964 stage production and features most of its musical numbers. However, the film’s director (who co-produced Fiddler with an uncredited Walter Mirisch) altered its narrative tone by making it grittier and more realistic.

For a film with a massive production – it cost, in 1971 dollars, $9 million to shoot in Europe – and a running time of 179 minutes, Fiddler on the Roof is a story that focuses on the trials and tribulations of Teyve (Topol), a poor milkman who lives with his wife Golde (Norma Crane) and five daughters (Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, Neva Small, Elaine Edwards, and Candy Bonstein) in the Ukrainian village of Anatevka, a typical shtetl in the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia.

As in the popular stage production – the 16^th longest-running show in Broadway history – Jewison’s adaptation of Fiddler focuses on Teyve’s efforts to remain true to his traditions and his Jewish faith in the face of many challenges in 1905 Russia.

On the domestic front, Teyve is vexed by his three oldest daughters’ desire to marry the men of their choice instead of consenting to arranged unions made by Yente (Molly Picon) Anatevka’s matchmaker. The emotional tug-of-war between the tradition-bound milkman and his strong-willed daughters is the main source of Fiddler’s dramatic conflict.

On the wider-world side, Teyve and his fellow Jews must contend with anti-Semitic prejudice from their Russian Orthodox Christian neighbors. As Tsar Nicholas II’s regime totters in a country humiliated by military defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and roiled in a rising tide of revolutionary unrest, the Jews who dwell in the shtetl of Anatevka face pogroms – officially sanctioned anti-Jewish riots and assaults – and possible eviction from the only home they know. 

Fiddler on the Roof is divided in two acts, with a short intermission – or entr’acte – over which a John Williams-arranged medley of music from the movie is played by the orchestra.

In Act One, Teyve’s old-school traditions are put to the test when his eldest daughter Tzeitel (Harris) spurns a matched marriage to Lazar Wolf (Paul Mann), Anatevka’s widowed – and much older – butcher. Instead, Tzeitel wishes to marry Motel Kamzoil (Leonard Frey), her childhood sweetheart and the village tailor.

Perchik: In this world it is the rich who are the criminals. Someday their wealth will be ours.

Tevye: That would be nice. If they would agree, I would agree.

Things get even more complicated when Teyve invites Perchik (Michael Glaser) to stay with the family in exchange for tutoring for his daughters. Perchik is an idealistic Marxist revolutionary who, as he says, wants to change the world. Naturally, Perchik’s youthful zeal clashes with Teyve’s world view – which, as the film repeatedly points out, is steeped in ancient traditions. And to make matters worse, his second daughter, Hodel (Marsh) falls in love with Perchik and rebels against her Papa’s old ways. 

And if that wasn’t enough, Teyve and his wife Golde (Crane) will face a similar break-with-tradition when their third marriable daughter, Chava (Small) becomes smitten with Fyedka (Raymond Lovelock), a handsome Russian – who is a practicing Russian Orthodox Christian.

Musical Numbers

Original music: Jerry Bock

Lyrics by: Sheldon Harnick

Adapted and Conducted by: John Williams

1. "Prologue / Tradition" – Tevye and Company
2. "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" – Tzeitel, Hodel, Chava, Shprintze, and Bielke
3. "If I Were a Rich Man" – Tevye
4. "Sabbath Prayer" – Tevye, Golde, and Chorus
5. "To Life" – Tevye, Lazar Wolf, and Male Company
6. "Tevye's Monologue (Tzeitel and Motel)" – Tevye
7. "Miracle of Miracles" – Motel
8. "Tevye's Dream" – Tevye, Golde, Grandmother Tzeitel, Rabbi, Fruma-Sarah, and Chorus
9. "Sunrise, Sunset" – Tevye, Golde, Perchik, Hodel, and Chorus
10. "Wedding Celebration / The Bottle Dance"
11. "Entr'acte" – Orchestra
12. "Tevye's Monologue (Hodel and Perchik)" – Tevye
13. "Do You Love Me?" – Tevye and Golde
14. "Far from the Home I Love" – Hodel
15. "Chava Ballet Sequence (Little Bird, Little Chavaleh)" – Tevye
16. "Tevye's Monologue (Chava and Fyedka)" – Tevye
17. "Anatevka" – Tevye, Golde, Lazar Wolf, Yente, Mendel, Mordcha, and Company

 The movie version of Fiddler on the Roof presents 17 of the 19 songs from the original Broadway stage production. For running time and other editorial reasons, “Now I Have Everything” and “The Rumor (I Just Heard)” were left out of the song selection. Furthermore, violinist Isaac Stern performed the solos heard in the score – recorded in a studio and of course, not seen in the film.

Fiddler on the Roof was, like the stage show it is based on, a popular and financial success. For its $9 million investment, United Artists and theater owners received a box office “take” of $83.3 million. Critics had a generally favorable reaction to the movie, although the late Roger Ebert wrote a tepid three-star review which begins like this:

I suppose "Fiddler on the Roof" is just the movie that lovers of the stage play were waiting for -- and since Fiddler is the most popular stage musical in history, that's something, all right.

But would it be heresy on my part to suggest that "Fiddler" isn't much as a musical, and that director Norman Jewison has made as good a film as can be made from a story that is quite simply boring?

There were a few other negative reviews written about Jewison’s take on Fiddler on the Roof, but for the most part audiences seemed to love it, as did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, whose membership handed out eight Academy Award nominations (Best Actor – Topol; Best Picture; Best Director – Norman Jewison; Best Supporting Actor – Leonard Frey; Best Art Direction - Robert F. Boyle and Michael Stringer; Set Decoration: Peter Lamont; Best Adapted Score – John Williams; Best Cinematography – Oswald Morris; Best Sound – Gordon K. McCallum and David Hilyard).  At the 1971 Oscars ceremony, which was held the following March, Fiddler walked away with three Academy Awards: Best Adapted Score for Williams (his first of five Oscars), Best Cinematography for Morris, and Best Sound for McCallum and Hildyard.

My Take

I was only eight years old and living in Colombia with my mom and older half-sister when Fiddler in the Roof came out in late fall of 1971, so I didn’t see it in its first theatrical run. I also missed seeing it in theaters when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists trotted it out in a re-release eight years later. I did see it when it aired in the early 1980s on a pay-TV service called On TV. I remember wanting to watch it mostly because I knew my favorite composer, John Williams, had been the adapter-conductor of the film’s score.

I was in high school then, and as a member of the school’s mixed choir, I was already familiar with some of the songs. Ms. Owen, the chorus director, had us learn the medley arrangement that included “Tradition,” “To Life,” “Matchmaker,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” and “Anatevka.” I liked the Bock-Harnick songs well enough to sit through the three-hour film, and I was entertained by the story, even though I was ill-prepared for the dark turn that Fiddler takes in Act Two. 

Now, over 30 years after that single viewing, I've seen Fiddler on the Roof a few more times and - after watching it on Blu-ray and sifting through the behind the scenes materials, I find that I like the movie now a bit more than I did in the early '80s.

I tend to stick to certain movie genres when I buy movies on home media formats (such as DVDs or Blu-ray discs); in my case, my collection is top-heavy with action-adventure epics, war movies, historical dramas, and science fiction/fantasy fare. I have only a few comedies and even fewer romantic films, and as far as musicals go I only had four in my DVD/Blu-ray library – South Pacific, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Grease. I also have a film that its director, George Lucas, calls his “musical comedy” – American Graffiti. But that’s not a traditional musical, so….)

That is, until a few weeks ago. That’s when I used my Shop with Points reward at Amazon and purchased 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s 2014 reissue of the 40^th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray at Amazon.

The 2014 Blu-ray edition is a slightly less expensive one-disc reissue of an earlier release; it keeps the “40^th Anniversary” label but ditches the standard-definition DVD that was included in the 2011 edition. Nevertheless, the single Blu-ray edition still offers much to viewers, including:

·         Fiddler on the Roof in high definition

·         Audio Commentary by director/producer Norman Jewison and actor Topol

·         Norman Jewison, Filmmaker

·         Norman Jewison Looks Back

·         John Williams: Creating a Musical Tradition

·         Songs of Fiddler on the Roof

·         Deleted Song: “Any Day Now”

·         Teyve’s Daughters

·         Set in Reality: Production Design

·         Teyve’s Dream Sequence (the only new extra made for the 2014 Blu-ray)

·         Trailers, Teasers, and TV Spots

20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment – which has the distribution rights to much of MGM-UA’s movie library – did a reasonably good job of digitally mastering the 1971 film to 1080p high definition resolution. Viewers with a good (40” or better) widescreen HDTV will be rewarded with a crisp, almost you-are-there-with-the-cast image that shows every detail of Jewison’s crowd-pleasing movie. (Of course, sharp-eyed viewers can tell when the actors are lip-synching, so its best to not examine things too closely.)  And if you watch this on a properly set-up home theater system that can project the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit) English track, the experience will be both immersive and entertaining.

My only issue with the 40^th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray is that 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment did not do a good job with the subtitles. The home media folks at Fox added subtitles in English (for deaf and hard of hearing viewers), Spanish, French. That is definitely a plus, especially for hard-of-hearing individuals like me. But in sharp contrast to 20^th Century Fox’s own South Pacific and The Sound of Music, the captions wizards decided not to add subtitles for the songs.

Why did they do this? I have no idea. My guess is that the task was too time consuming and difficult for the persons assigned to add the captions and make sure they were in sync with the soundtrack. Maybe there was a deadline and leaving the song lyrics out was a necessary shortcut to meet it? I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. But the end result is the same; it looks odd – and awfully sloppy – to present a film which has subtitles for all the actors’ spoken lines and even the odd animal sound (the subtitle DUCK QUACKS actually appears in the film), but none for the songs. Yeah, way to go, Fox.  

That quibble aside, though, the film in this Blu-ray release is still marvelous. It is entertaining and full of warm wit and lots of music. Naturally, Jerry Bock’s music – arranged by future Star Wars composer John Williams – and Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics capture the essence of Jewish culture and the indomitable spirit of Teyve, Golde, Yente, Lazar Wolf, and all the memorable characters who inhabit Anatevka.

Tevye: As the Good Book says, when a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick.

Mendel: Where does the Book say that?

Tevye: Well, it doesn't say that exactly, but somewhere there is something about a chicken.