FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1971)

Made in a period when B’way’s biggest Musical Hits were dying on film (HELLO, DOLLY/’69; SWEET CHARITY/’69; MAN OF LA MANCHA/’72; 1776/’72; MAME/’74), director Norman Jewison earns points simply for surviving the transfer. Happily, it’s much better than that, often beautifully serving the fine, slightly gentrified Sheldon Harnick/Jerry Bock/Joseph Stein stage show taken from Sholem Aleichem’s turn-of-the-last-century tales of shtetl life in a Russian-Jewish community where long held traditions were being challenged by a new generation just as time there was running out. In general, the men fare better than the women, even if Topol, physically perfect as Tevye, dairyman father to five independent-minded daughters, reads all his lines with ‘kletzmer’ inflections. Still, he gets everything across, so too Paul Michael Glaser’s radical suitor from Kiev and Leonard Frey, joyously good as a poor tailor who grows into a mensch. (Sadly, he also gets the score's one dud song.) Jewison (an Episcopalian, of all things!) fumbles some of the vaudeville inspired bits, and the big comic dream sequence (a stage highlight) is botched. But helps Topol nail his throwaway gags, loose his rich plummy lower register on the songs, and harness enough power to handle all the big dramatic scenes. Similarly, Norma Crane as Tevye’s wife has her best moment playing 'straight' drama, entering a Russian Orthodox Church searching for one of her girls who has run off. It all works because Jewison aces the tricky balance between musical comedy stylization & grounded realism, strongly aided by cinematographer Oswald Morris’s earthy palette and daring lens choices. (Getting himself a hugely overdue Oscar®.) And if the film isn’t quite the classic the stage play is (six B’way revivals and counting, currently Off-B’way in a Yiddish chamber production), it’s awfully good in its different way.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A great Extra track on the Original Cast B’way Album CD features lyricist Harnick in a mordantly funny number dropped from the show: ‘When Messiah Comes.’