Raim then implies that the success of “Fiddler” made Jewison feel a sense of pride in the identity he was forced to take on. They felt he could transcend the Jewish audience of the story and play, both of which were written by Jews. They said that was exactly why they wanted him. After guiding a string of successful comedies and the Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night” in the 1960s, Jewison got the chance to helm “Fiddler on the Roof.”īut he was worried that the studio executives were making the same mistake his classmates once made. The director was a Christian boy whose classmates in Toronto mistook him for being Jewish due to his last name. It’s about Jewison, whose story starts, finishes and forms the spine of this 88-minute movie. (Courtesy of Zeitgeist Films)īut while all of those people add a lot, this is not a documentary about them. ![]() From left: Chaim Topol and Norman Jewison brought “Fiddler on the Roof” to the silver screen in 1971. ![]() Boyle he even included the insights of Kenneth Turan, the longtime film critic for the Los Angeles Times. To do so, he interviewed Topol and the women who played his daughters - Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh and Neva Small he also talked to the men who helped Jewison with musical direction, lyrics and set design in John Williams, Sheldon Harnick and Robert F. Raim, a documentary filmmaker who was born in Israel, aimed with this documentary to do the work of a magazine-style oral history and go behind the scenes of the making of a classic film. But what “Fiddler’s Journey” makes clear is that Jewison was just the guy for this job. Would a Jewish director have been able to do that? We will never know. He was also able to convey it through an art form, movies, built for an audience of all religions. As the song “Sunrise, Sunset” portrays in such moving fashion, it’s hard when your kids get old, when you have to let them go and when you grow to understand that everything is ephemeral.Īs a non-Jewish artist who liked and appreciated Jewish culture, Jewison saw and understood that duality. ![]() At the same time, he’s a character that any father or parent can relate to. Tevye is a classic Jewish shtetl character he’s committed to tradition, he maintains a dialogue with God and he’s deeply concerned about the wellbeing of his daughters. Its power, as several people explain in “Fiddler’s Journey,” is in its ability to both explain Jewish culture and capture timeless themes. The doc points out after its opening credits that New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael described Fiddler as “the most powerful movie musical ever made.” The adaptation made more than $80 million at the box office and received eight Oscar nominations, the most of that year. What the director did, as the doc’s director Daniel Raim shows by focusing on Jewison as his primary subject, was bring the Sholem Aleichem story and Joseph Stein play to a mass audience.Ĭhaim Topol, the actor who plays the main character Tevye in the 1971 film, explains to Raim at one point that more than 1 billion people saw “Fiddler on the Roof” in theaters, including moviegoers as far away as Japan. We do not share data with third party vendors.Īnd make no mistake: The man deserves to be celebrated. Get Jewish Exponent's Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories
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