In the new documentary, “Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen,” Norman Jewison recalls how he was offered the chance to lead the film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof”: “What would you to say if we were to say we want you to direct ‘Fiddler on the Roof’? And then I said, ‘What would you say if I said I’m a goy?”
It’s just one of the witty and illuminating lines from Daniel Raim’s delightful recounting of how the classic 1971 Hollywood film came to the big screen. The documentary opens at Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre today. Raim includes interviews with key players, including Jewison, who got the job; music adapter / orchestrator John Williams; lyricist Sheldon Harnick; violinist Isaac Stern; and actor Topol, who played Tevye. The film is narrated by Jeff Goldblum.
The play and film are based on Sholem Aleichem’s turn of the 20th century tales of a dairyman’s efforts to marry off his daughters, protect his family, and hold to his Jewish traditions amidst the changing mores and continuing violent anti-semitism of his Eastern European homeland, from which his entire Jewish community is finally forcefully evicted. The play was a monument to the Jewish world destroyed by the Russians and the Nazi Holocaust.
Zero Mostel, with his giant personality, had made the role of the dairyman Tevya his own, and famous, as the star of the Broadway production. But Jewison desired to give the movie greater naturalism, so instead he cast Topol, the star of the London production, and filmed in what was then Yugoslavia. But the documentary notes that some groused that Topol was an Israeli Jew not an Eastern European Jew, perhaps giving the movie a more vociferous tone.
Jewison had directed television programs with Harry Belafonte and Judy Garland, before becoming known as the socially-engaged director of films including “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1973) and “Moonstruck” (1987). He was a Protestant Christian, but he arrived with experience of anti-semitism from his childhood in Toronto where he faced harassment because bigots incorrectly assumed from his last name that he was Jewish. Later, after serving in the Canadian Navy during World War II, he was disturbed by racist segregation he saw on buses while traveling the American South.
When the 1971 film debuted, New Yorker critic Pauline Kael called it “the most powerful movie musical ever made.” “Fiddler’s Journey” makes you want to watch “Fiddler on the Roof” again, as well as Jewison’s other films. Raim captures Jewison’s warmth and insight and inspiring desire to do what he can to repair our broken world.
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