Fiddler On The Roof

The stage version of Fiddler On The Roof was a huge hit in its day as indeed was the film which won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Sound, and Best Scoring. Although there is only really one memorable song, the classic “If I Were A Rich Man”, the music is good (the violin is played with brio by Isaac Stern) but Norman Jewison’s big budget rendition of the slight and heavily sentimental story is far too long and overwhelms it.

The story concerns a poor Jewish milkman, Tevye (Topol, replacing Zero Mostel who originally played the part on stage) who live in a crummy Ukranian village with his bossy wife, Golde (Norma Crane), and his five daughters, three of whom are of marrying age and who believe in love as a basis for marriage, a radically modern development for Tevye. Meanwhile the Tsar is mounting a pogrom.

Jewison adopts a panoramically naturalistic style for the film, something which works well if you have epic material but this he does not have. Writer Joseph Stein adapted it for the screen from his own stage adaptation of the Sholem Aleichem stories and loads it all manner of supposedly endearing Yiddish mannerisms and romanticized peasant ways but whilst the reiterative structure of the play as the 3 daughters in turn marry against their father’s wishes may have worked in the artificial environment of the stage, it comes across as simply repetitious in the naturalistic form of the film and particularly after the intermission, which comes around the 105m mark it is impossible to give a toss about the the village or its inhabitants. In fact you’d have to say the Tsar was doing them a favour by forcing them to emigrate to America where their descendants would eventually be able to watch this in well-heeled comfort.

 

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