The Digital Bits: What was your first impression of Fiddler?
Carson: I first encountered Fiddler when I was 8 years old. My parents had the Zero Mostel Broadway vinyl album and as a child I played it constantly, and eventually wore that album out. My mom and dad would then explain the stories within those songs, and how my great grandpa was a milkman in Russia “just like Tevye” they would say. He eventually left for America during the Pogrom. So it resonated into my soul at a very early age. That was fifty years ago.
Kennedy: I saw Fiddler, eagerly and with high anticipation, at the first-run movie theater in my hometown of Redding, California. I was a freshman in high school. I thought it was wonderful for all the reasons it’s still wonderful. As a nascent film critic, I didn’t think it was perfect—it’s perhaps a mite too long and a few of the performances aren’t as strong as they could be. But overall, I was visually and emotionally dazzled by it on the big screen.
Matessino: Fiddler on the Roof was my real first impression of cinema beyond films for kids. I saw it at the end of its run at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City, in 70mm 6-track, and it was probably the first time I ever heard stereo in a cinema. The impression it made on me is what led to everything that came after for me, all of my love for movies, music and theatre. That has not changed one bit for me.
Solomon: My family owned the original Broadway cast album when I was a kid and I remember dancing around our living room, singing along with every number when I was eight or nine. I felt like I had entered the story and belonged to it. I first saw it when the national tour came to Chicago in 1967 and played at the McVickers Theater. I was 10 and it was a big deal for my family—who lived in the suburbs—to pile into the station wagon and head downtown to see a show. We had never done that before—nor after. Though we sat high up in the balcony, I recall feeling completely captivated and especially drawn to Hodel and Perchik; I think I was a budding Bundist.
The Digital Bits: In what way is Fiddler a significant motion picture?
Carson: Fiddler is a significant motion picture because of how it was handled by director Norman Jewison and everyone behind the creations of the film. Filming on location and choosing Topol to play Tevye, with the addition of John Williams using authentic instrumentation—expanding the orchestra for a big-screen sound—makes it all the more impressive.
Kennedy: Fiddler appeared when the film musical was in steep decline. A number of big budgeted musicals had recently failed at the box office (Star!, Paint Your Wagon, Hello, Dolly!, Darling Lili, Song of Norway). They were out of step with a filmgoing public that favored edgy contemporary films like Midnight Cowboy and M*A*S*H. United Artists was willing to take a chance on Fiddler, given that it had become a record-breaking smash on Broadway and the West End. It scored at the box office, momentarily stopping the qualitative downward spiral of film musicals.
Matessino: Fiddler is significant in many ways, but one of them is the fact that the movie was produced as if it wasn’t a musical at all. It was designed, cast and filmed with great authenticity and accuracy, and then the adapted stage show and songs were played over that setting. The fact that this worked so well is what makes it a timeless piece of cinema that still holds up. It’s also a great example of how the book musical form is very good, if done well, at illuminating history for audiences. If not for this musical, it’s possible no one would remember this important piece of Jewish history and their coercion out of Tsarist Russia more than a century ago.
Daniel Raim: I think director Norman Jewison and his cast and crew created a timeless masterpiece and a profoundly moving movie musical adaptation of the Broadway hit. The look of the film, with its rustic and earthy brown tones and muted colors, is wonderfully realized by production designer Robert F. Boyle, costume designers Joan Bridge and Elizabeth Haffenden, and cinematographer Oswald Morris, all masters of their respective crafts. I love the entire cast, including their enchanting vocal performances. And Jewison was the great "conductor," overseeing this wide-screen epic with humor, tenderness, visual panache, and empathy for the characters.
Solomon: Well, in its day it was significant right off the bat in terms of dough: it had the largest advance group sales in Hollywood history—$1.25 million. And while most of the musicals released from the end of the 1960s on, flopped, losing millions for studios, Fiddler did quite well. More important, like the stage version before had been for Broadway, the movie was the first work in the medium of the major motion picture to present, with affection, the vanished world of Eastern European Jewry; it has come sentimentally (and in various ways erroneously) to stand as the origin story for American Jews.
The Digital Bits: Which are the film’s standout songs?
Carson: The musical has so many standout songs and performances. Sunrise Sunset is so mesmerizingly beautiful and If I Were a Rich Man is funny and heartwarming. But I love hearing Tradition belted out by the townspeople, doing their daily chores as the audience is introduced to familiar characters. The violin solos (Isaac Stern) are fantastic along with John Williams’ orchestrations.
Kennedy: Let’s salute composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick for their great score. All the songs are strong, but Tradition, Matchmaker, Matchmaker, If I Were a Rich Man, and Sunrise, Sunset have rightly become standards.
Matessino: It’s one of those rare musicals where just about every song is memorable, although the ones from the first half of the story are the ones that have become the well-known standards, like Matchmaker, If I Were a Rich Man and Sunrise, Sunset. The rest are no less amazing, especially Sabbath Prayer and Do You Love Me? Tevye’s Dream is a groundbreaking construction, and To Life! is Jerome Robbins at his best.
Raim: As depicted in Jewison’s film, the Shabbat Prayer scene is beautifully performed, staged, and photographed. I love the warmth and intimacy of the scene, showing a family lovingly singing around the glimmering light of the Shabbat candles. Likewise, the Anatevka scene, as depicted in Jewison’s movie, is profoundly moving, with John Williams underscore beautifully adapting Jerry Boch’s original music and Sheldon Harnick’s lyrics.
Solomon: Unfair question! I love all the songs. I’ll say Anatevka, not because I love it most—in fact it’s a bit much in the movie—but because it seriously stands out by taking up the most space. The departure scene lasts a whopping twenty minutes and the song dirges along with the packing up and trudging away Anatevkans for much of that time.
The Digital Bits: How does the film compare to the stage production and source material?
Carson: I saw the play years after seeing the film and I love how small and intimate the stage show is but for the film I feel it was the right decision to expand and make it a larger scale production.
Kennedy: Fiddler is based on a compilation of stories by Sholem Aleichem called Tevye and his Daughters from 1894. They were the sources of a 1939 Yiddish film before becoming a Broadway musical in 1964. Fiddler is a strong example of how to wisely adapt a stage production to the screen. The studio gave a visionary director, Norman Jewison, substantial artistic freedom. To give Fiddler weight and realism, Jewison opened it up, and filmed on location in then Yugoslavia. He had a fantastic command of the material, knowing what to trim and what to keep. He took advantage of what film can offer, in this case widescreen vistas, stereo sound, and artfully chosen close-ups and long shots. He wisely kept almost all of the original score. He cast the film with little known actors, so they brought no outside baggage with them. And he kept the full weight of Fiddler’s grave themes pertaining to family, religion and religious intolerance, poverty, and the breakdown of tradition in the face of momentous cultural changes.
Matessino: Overall, Fiddler does a superb job of bringing the world that Sholem Aleichem wrote about to mainstream audiences. The writings were not translated into English until the 1940s, and even after that the appeal was very much focused on the Jewish community. Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, although Jewish themselves, focused on the universal quality of the story, as did Joe Stein, who did a great job of cherry picking different parts of the Teyve tales that combined together into something archetypal, where the main character is challenged by the breakdown of tradition, bending as far as his spirit can manage, and then we witness an entire way of life come to an abrupt end. Stein adapted his own play for the screen, which was the right way to go, and I think it’s a brilliant adaptation, faithful to the show but making certain changes to the music and the scenes that were right for the medium of cinema.
Raim: When I interviewed Norman Jewison for the documentary, he talked about the challenges of adapting the Fiddler play and "making it believable and bringing it out into the real world." Jewison told me, "I wanted to put up a pogrom into the film. I wanted to do something they could never do in the play." The sequence of the people leaving Anatevka at the film’s end, sloshing through the mud and carrying their worldly possessions, is heartbreaking.
Solomon: As Norman Jewison often said, film is a more realistic medium than theater, more literal. Even if I don’t entirely agree with that as a general pronouncement—there is such a thing as experimental film, after all—it’s certainly true of Fiddler: in the movie, we’ve got real cows and barns and an extended violent pogrom scene; the stage is more metaphorical and requires audiences to fill in with their imaginations. Related to this, tonally the film is more somber. Jewison himself said he tamped down the humor. As for its relation to the original Sholem Aleichem stories—how much time have you got?
The Digital Bits: Where do you think Fiddler ranks among roadshow era musicals?
Carson: Where Fiddler ranks is a challenging question. When talking about musicals there is a focus on West Side Story, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady and Cabaret. So I hope with this anniversary we are able to introduce another generation to this film and its impressive use of music and stories.
Kennedy: It belongs on the list of the best and most successful, which would include West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music.
Matessino: Fiddler might be one of the last great and successful of the bunch. It’s funny how we had so many big roadshow musicals produced in an attempt to capitalize on the success of The Sound of Music in 1965, and just when it was declared over with a string of costly failures in 1967 and into 1968, along comes Funny Girl and Oliver!, both hits and the latter winning the Best Picture Oscar. Then we have more failed musicals over the next couple of years, by which time Fiddler was already in production, so there was probably some concern about how it would be received. But it was made with such integrity by Norman Jewison, that there was every reason to be confident because the material was so strong. When it comes to roadshow musicals with intermissions and all of that, Fiddler was the last one to really enjoy a big success.
Solomon: I don’t have enough basis of comparison to answer that specifically, but I will say: Hooray for the roadshow. All the grandness of the experience—reserved seats, overture, intermission, glossy program book—made going to see it a special occasion. Maybe now that we stream so much film at home, movie-going at theaters will have to become lavish again. I hope so.
The Digital Bits: In what way was Norman Jewison a good choice to direct (i.e. how did his talent/skillset/sensibilities, etc. benefit the project), and where do you think Fiddler ranks among his body of work?
Carson: Norman Jewison is a very skilled director and his understanding of the subject matter goes beyond what lies on the surface. Over the course of four years and beyond (I interviewed him last year for the Hal Ashby film The Landlord) whenever we talked Fiddler it was with a deep understanding of the characters. Yes, he can direct actors and guide a film to a cohesive vision shared by many of his collaborators, but it’s his choices of who and where and how a film is made that show his producing skills are very much a part of his process. I cannot imagine the film without his influence and guidance. If you look at the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary that I licensed for the Collector’s Edition LaserDisc release in 1997 (renewed for subsequent DVD and Blu-ray releases) you will see Norman on the set, singing along, crying along, as he directs and that shows his empathy and how his heart and soul are in every scene of the film.
Kennedy: Like Robert Wise and West Side Story, Jewison was a highly versatile director. It’s difficult to compare Fiddler to, say, In the Heat of the Night or Moonstruck. They’re all outstanding films, but so different one from the other. Jewison followed Fiddler with another musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, but it was nowhere near the hit Fiddler was.
Matessino: The context is very important because Norman Jewison very much wanted to make films that were socially relevant and addressed important issues. He hadn’t done a musical, but he had a lot of experience with musical variety shows for television, both in his native Canada and in the U.S. He had a very good relationship with the Mirisch brothers, for whom he made several features in a row, and he formally committed to direct Fiddler before In the Heat of the Night was completed. Norman hates any kind of social injustice, so took the assignment very seriously. He was very much affected by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which happened just days before the Academy Awards. He, along with Sidney Poitier and other African Americans slated to appear on the Oscar show, announced that they were going to attend the King funeral, and so the Oscar ceremony was delayed, and In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture, of course. It was a very tumultuous time. But then, just two months later, Robert Kennedy was killed in L.A. Jewison knew him personally and was scheduled to meet with him, and this was a tipping point that resulted in a decision to move his entire family to England for an extended period when Fiddler production began. By the time that happened in mid-1970, the U.S. had changed a lot and I’m sure that this story of feeling compelled to leave one’s own country resonated even more with Jewison. So there’s really no doubt that he was the ideal director for the film and that it’s such a great movie entirely because of what he brought to it.
Raim: Jewison’s background directing high-level musical television in the late 1950s, including Tonight with Belafonte and The Judy Garland Show, prepared him from the perspective of how to move the camera when musical performances are taking place. As a result, his sense of timing, mise-en-scene, and choreography for the big-screen canvas is superb. Jewison told me that he ranks Fiddler as his favorite film. It’s also my favorite Jewison film.
Solomon: Jewison had strong liberal commitments and was deeply rankled by bigotry and inequality and that sensibility infused his Fiddler. He said at the time that he thought it would be the most important movie of the year. He brought a strong sense of purpose to the project and he had a sincere love for Jewish culture. Is it his best film? I have no idea. I still have a warm spot for The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, though I haven’t seen it since I was a kid and hope I’d laugh just as hard at it now, and In the Heat of the Night is a perfect encapsulation of late ‘60s naïve high hopes for a brotherhood-of-man solution to racism, while also remaining surprisingly captivating as story-telling. But Fiddler is probably his most enduring picture.
