Fiddler on the Roof (Collector's Edition)

Each of his three older daughters choose a different path. The first one refuses to marry the person chosen by the father as she in love with the tailer Motel. The way Tevye cons his wife into agreeing for this wedding is one of the funniest pieces of the movie. The characters chosen are unique and beautifully portrayed. The song before this, "Matchmaker, matchmaker" is beautiful. The way Yente, the matchmaker looks at the youngest daughters as though they were caravans wares is extremely funny. The second daughter Tseitel chooses the revolutionary who is against the Tsar and wishes communism. The song in the bar "To life, Le Chaim" is unusual and shows the way the Jews and the Christians can get along in a limited manner. The third daughter chooses a gentile.

Though this is a musical, the acting, story and the character portrayal is deep. Songs range from comic like "If I were a rich man", to haunting, "Sunrise, sunset", to sad and lonely, "Little bird". Though being Jewish will help one understand this movie better, it is not a necessity. The screenplay is wonderful. The particular one that I like is when Avraham comes and tells that there are bad things going on in the world. Another person says, "Why should I break my head about the outside world, let the outside world break its own head". Here Tevye says, "He is right, if you spit in the air, it lands in your face." Then the revolutionary says, "Nonsense, you cannot be blind to what happens outside." Then Tevye says, "You know, he is also right." At this time Avraham points to the revolutionary and the other person and says, "He is right and he is right, they can't both be right." Now Tevye looks at Avraham and says, "You know, you are also right."

When the Jews are evicted, it is extremely sad. They console themselves saying that their village Anatevka was not exactly the garden of Eden. This song, "Anatevka", is sad and heartbreaking. They have so little but still love it. It reminds one that happiness is something of the inside and has nothing to do with material possessions. This movie is a classic and a timeless masterpiece. It might be difficult for some people to understand due to the history of Tsarist Russia and its pogroms and the context, otherwise, to date it is my favorite musical.

Tevye the milkman has three daughters who, one-by-one find the man of their dreams. The story is about Tevye's inner turmoil as he prepares himself to let each daughter go off into the world of marriage. Faith and tradition are everything in Tevye's life and thinking, and they surface in little chats he has with his God. His God is the sounding board for his thinking but his tradition offsets everything else. It is about the tradition of the Jewish culture and how everything must have a law and a faith to keep them together.

Norman Jewison has made some great films over his career, but for me, Fiddler is the pinnacle of his artistic achievement in musicals. It is stylishly with the flair of an artist who knows.

Music is so much of the story and Jewison has edited to the music. Unlike many previous musicals (i.e. Rogers & Hammerstein or most filmed Operas) which hold a shot for the singers and actors to move about the frame, Jewison has cut and intercut the film on the meaning of the story and the beat of the music so that the performers and the music bring the audience intimately into the lives of the characters. Fiddler shows how a creative director can construct a film to be a spectacle of congeniality of all the elements, because he knows how to tell a story visually.

This is a great film from a master filmmaker with a twinkle in his eye.