Director
Norman Jewison
Norman Jewison
Chaim Topol - Tevye
Norma Crane - Golde
Rosalind Harris - Tzeitel, Tevye's oldest daughter
Michele Marsh - Hodel, Tevye's second daughter
Neva Small - Chava, Tevye's third daughter
Molly Picon - Yente, the matchmaker
Paul Mann - Lazar Wolf
Leonard Frey - Motel Kamzoil
Paul Michael Glaser - Perchik
Raymond Lovelock - Fyedka (An Orthodox Christian)
Elaine Edwards - Shprintze, Tevye's fourth daughter
Candy Bonstein - Bielke, Tevye's fifth daughter
Norma Crane - Golde
Rosalind Harris - Tzeitel, Tevye's oldest daughter
Michele Marsh - Hodel, Tevye's second daughter
Neva Small - Chava, Tevye's third daughter
Molly Picon - Yente, the matchmaker
Paul Mann - Lazar Wolf
Leonard Frey - Motel Kamzoil
Paul Michael Glaser - Perchik
Raymond Lovelock - Fyedka (An Orthodox Christian)
Elaine Edwards - Shprintze, Tevye's fourth daughter
Candy Bonstein - Bielke, Tevye's fifth daughter
Tutte Lemkow - the fiddler
I fancy myself a movie critic. For two years, I even got paid for it. And yet, I carry with me many a cinematic sin. There are a lot of movies one would think a guy calling himself a movie critic would have seen at least once before. I won't go into what movies that perhaps I should have seen at least once before. But one of those missed titles is the 1971 musical, "Fiddler on the Roof," written by Jerry Bock and directed by Norman Jewison.
Well, it was a missed title. It's not anymore. Hence, this post.
In the midst of my wife and me catching up on a variety of musicals over the last couple of years, "Fiddler on the Roof" is a film I've had my sights set on for a long time. I've been curious about what it was all about. Only now am I getting to it. My wife gifted me a copy for Father's Day, and I was very grateful. Thanks, again, Sweety!
Now that I'm publicly confessing my negligence in movie watching, I admit I had never seen the musical "Oliver!" before either. I finally watched it for the first time a month or two ago. I'm saving that review for another long-term movie post project I'm working on regarding film adaptations of Dickens' "Oliver Twist." That'll come sooner or later.
So, "Fiddler on the Roof" is set in a small Jewish village called Anatevka located somewhere in Imperial Russia in 1905.
The story follows a Jewish milkman, Tevye (Chaim Topol), who lives with his wife, Golde (Norma Crane), and their five daughters. Though poor, Tevye is a devoted family man trying to keep his family
well cared for while ensuring the family's Jewish traditions are preserved. He even sings about tradition!
Those customs and traditions he holds dear, desiring their longevity, have been a long-standing moral guide for the lifestyles not only of his own family but of all the Jewish folks in Anatevka.
However, as his three oldest daughters—Tzeitel, the oldest (Rosalind Harris), Hodel, the second daughter (Michele Marsh), and Chava, the third daughter (Neva Small)—start eyeing suitors who propose marriage yet don't quite hold the same values, morals, or convictions as Tevye, he has to weigh each of their requests for his daughters' hands in marriage against those values and traditions he sang about earlier in the movie.
The local matchmaker, Yente (Molly Picon), pairs the local butcher, Lazar Wolf (Paul Mann), with Tzeitel.
Despite the huge age difference between Lazar and Tzeitel, Tevye agrees to the arrangement. But you know who doesn't agree to this? Tzeitel! He's much too old. And she has her heart set on Motel Kamzoil (Leonard Frey), the local tailor and Tzeitel's childhood friend. And though he doesn't have great wealth, he's devoted to her, which makes him a much more suitable match.
Tzeitel begs her father not to make her marry Lazar, even despite the agreement he made with him.
Of course, he's got to tell Golde about it, and that's a whole big dream sequence with singing and dancing.
Two other suitors narrow in on Tevye's next two eldest daughters. And like any good father, he finds these guys questionable.
Perchik (Paul Michael Glaser), a Jewish student from the university in Kyiv with strong Bolshevik political views, proposes to Hodel just before he heads back to Kyiv to work for the festering Russian revolution.
Well, it was a missed title. It's not anymore. Hence, this post.
In the midst of my wife and me catching up on a variety of musicals over the last couple of years, "Fiddler on the Roof" is a film I've had my sights set on for a long time. I've been curious about what it was all about. Only now am I getting to it. My wife gifted me a copy for Father's Day, and I was very grateful. Thanks, again, Sweety!
Now that I'm publicly confessing my negligence in movie watching, I admit I had never seen the musical "Oliver!" before either. I finally watched it for the first time a month or two ago. I'm saving that review for another long-term movie post project I'm working on regarding film adaptations of Dickens' "Oliver Twist." That'll come sooner or later.
So, "Fiddler on the Roof" is set in a small Jewish village called Anatevka located somewhere in Imperial Russia in 1905.
The story follows a Jewish milkman, Tevye (Chaim Topol), who lives with his wife, Golde (Norma Crane), and their five daughters. Though poor, Tevye is a devoted family man trying to keep his family
 |
| Chaim Topol as Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof." |
well cared for while ensuring the family's Jewish traditions are preserved. He even sings about tradition!
Those customs and traditions he holds dear, desiring their longevity, have been a long-standing moral guide for the lifestyles not only of his own family but of all the Jewish folks in Anatevka.
However, as his three oldest daughters—Tzeitel, the oldest (Rosalind Harris), Hodel, the second daughter (Michele Marsh), and Chava, the third daughter (Neva Small)—start eyeing suitors who propose marriage yet don't quite hold the same values, morals, or convictions as Tevye, he has to weigh each of their requests for his daughters' hands in marriage against those values and traditions he sang about earlier in the movie.
The local matchmaker, Yente (Molly Picon), pairs the local butcher, Lazar Wolf (Paul Mann), with Tzeitel.
Despite the huge age difference between Lazar and Tzeitel, Tevye agrees to the arrangement. But you know who doesn't agree to this? Tzeitel! He's much too old. And she has her heart set on Motel Kamzoil (Leonard Frey), the local tailor and Tzeitel's childhood friend. And though he doesn't have great wealth, he's devoted to her, which makes him a much more suitable match.
Tzeitel begs her father not to make her marry Lazar, even despite the agreement he made with him.
Of course, he's got to tell Golde about it, and that's a whole big dream sequence with singing and dancing.
Two other suitors narrow in on Tevye's next two eldest daughters. And like any good father, he finds these guys questionable.
Perchik (Paul Michael Glaser), a Jewish student from the university in Kyiv with strong Bolshevik political views, proposes to Hodel just before he heads back to Kyiv to work for the festering Russian revolution.
Soon after that, a young man named Fyedka (Raymond Lovelock), an Orthodox Christian, falls in love with, and proposes to, Tevye's third oldest, Chava. Of course, being Christian really goes against her father's Jewish grain. With each relationship, Tevye is more reluctant to give his blessing. With Fyedka and Chava, he's really not happy about it.
All the while, Anatevka faces looming persecution from the Russian Empire, and the townsfolk are threatened with exile from their beloved homes.
All the while, Anatevka faces looming persecution from the Russian Empire, and the townsfolk are threatened with exile from their beloved homes.
Tevye carries this internal struggle between tradition and change amidst a backdrop of relentless social and political upheaval. This is especially true as his own daughters wish to marry into lives not quite fitting within those Jewish traditions. And with each daughter, that respective lifestyle deviates farther and farther from those traditions.
The emotion from Tevye is keenly felt—both the joys and the anguish—thanks to Topol's memorable performance. I don't toss out the term "memorable" haphazardly. That's the best word to describe his acting in this movie. His fear, happiness, anger, and sadness (dare I call them crosses?) hit the audience pretty hard. I really felt sympathy for Tevye. But above all, he struggles to do what he thinks is pleasing to God despite his personal thoughts and feelings. Many a time in the movie, when being asked to do or give something he initially doesn't want to, he glances towards Heaven, sometimes with a comment, or rather, a question.
The emotion from Tevye is keenly felt—both the joys and the anguish—thanks to Topol's memorable performance. I don't toss out the term "memorable" haphazardly. That's the best word to describe his acting in this movie. His fear, happiness, anger, and sadness (dare I call them crosses?) hit the audience pretty hard. I really felt sympathy for Tevye. But above all, he struggles to do what he thinks is pleasing to God despite his personal thoughts and feelings. Many a time in the movie, when being asked to do or give something he initially doesn't want to, he glances towards Heaven, sometimes with a comment, or rather, a question.
In one scene when the local bookseller tells him about expulsions of Jewish people happening elsewhere in Russia, Tevye looks to God and says, "Dear God. Did you have to send me news like that - today of all days? I know, I know we are the chosen people. But once in a while, can't you choose someone else?" There's a welcomed handful of these humorous conversations he has with God.
Aside from Topol's performance, and of course the well-remembered songs, it was the actual fiddler playing on the roof that made me think. I was curious what he represented and how that representation played into the story.
"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," Tevye says to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. "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!"
Sure, I guess that sums it up.
I don't know much, if anything, about Jewish traditions and their adherence to tradition.As an old-school mackerel-snapping Papist myself, also known as a Traditional Roman Catholic, the premise of tradition works for me.
So, the premise of keeping balance while living a Catholic life within a fallen, corrupt world strikes some sensitive chords. The world changes while we live in that world, but we work hard not to be "of" that world. But this is a story of a Jewish village. So, the fiddler seems to be the image of their endurance as the world around them changes and tries to tear into them.
The roof is like earthly life. The fiddler is the richness and beauty of religion, family, and human flourishing all wrapped together. It's all balancing on faith against the winds of change. Stability isn't possible when trying to keep up with the constant changes of the world, which ceaselessly blow in different directions.
There's certainly a hint of "social progress" in the story. There's also a strong melancholic tone underneath the joy and beauty and all that. The premise isn't so much whether customs should change. Rather, Tevye struggles with whether people can remain themselves while the traditions that define them seem to slowly break away little by little. The story doesn't really answer that question, which is why it's such a fantastic movie. Well, there's a lot of other factors that make it fantastic, of course. There's the amazing songs that have seem to last through the decades. Topol's amazing performance, once again. The turmoil. The depictions. The emotion. The storyline. I can't resist keeping it in my stockpile of personal favorite films from now on.
So, the premise of keeping balance while living a Catholic life within a fallen, corrupt world strikes some sensitive chords. The world changes while we live in that world, but we work hard not to be "of" that world. But this is a story of a Jewish village. So, the fiddler seems to be the image of their endurance as the world around them changes and tries to tear into them.
The roof is like earthly life. The fiddler is the richness and beauty of religion, family, and human flourishing all wrapped together. It's all balancing on faith against the winds of change. Stability isn't possible when trying to keep up with the constant changes of the world, which ceaselessly blow in different directions.
There's certainly a hint of "social progress" in the story. There's also a strong melancholic tone underneath the joy and beauty and all that. The premise isn't so much whether customs should change. Rather, Tevye struggles with whether people can remain themselves while the traditions that define them seem to slowly break away little by little. The story doesn't really answer that question, which is why it's such a fantastic movie. Well, there's a lot of other factors that make it fantastic, of course. There's the amazing songs that have seem to last through the decades. Topol's amazing performance, once again. The turmoil. The depictions. The emotion. The storyline. I can't resist keeping it in my stockpile of personal favorite films from now on.
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