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Entertainment Topics
Movie Night With Your Teens
Fiddler on the Roof
Rated: G
Genre: Musical
Themes: The tension between tradition and social change, self-sacrifice,
romantic love, accepting others, religious faith and anti-Semitism
Running Time: 3 hours (Some families may wish to view this 2-tape set on
consecutive evenings)
Starring: Topol as Tevye; Norma Crane as Golde; Rosalind Harris as Tzeitel;
Leonard Frey as Motel; Paul Michael Glaser as Perchik; Michele Marsh as Hodel;
Neva Small as Chava; Paul Mann as Lazar Wolf
Directed by: Norman Jewison
Cautions: Celebrating the betrothal of his daughter, Tevye joins Lazar
Wolf for several shots of vodka. The pair proceed to a tavern where they and other
male villagers get drunk. A humorously conceived dream involves disgruntled ghosts
in a graveyard. Despite its G rating, the film includes several intense moments
inappropriate for young children (soldiers disrupt a wedding and later cause fatalities
when they break up a demonstration).
Summary
Fiddler on the Roof was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two.
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In the Russian village of Anatevka in the early 1900s, a poor milkman named
Tevye struggles to maintain Jewish traditions. Challenges come when the three
oldest of his five daughters reject the time-honored system for getting a husband
(an official matchmaker chooses and the father approves). Instead they select
their own mates based on romantic love. More change arrives with state-sponsored
anti-Semitism and the birth pains of the coming revolution against the czar.
An elderly woman named Yente has made a match for Tevye’s oldest daughter,
Tzeitel, with Lazar Wolf, the elderly but wealthy village butcher. Her parents
are thrilled, but Tzeitel’s heart belongs to Motel, a poor tailor who
has been her friend since childhood. She begs her father not to make her marry
Lazar Wolf, who has been promised her hand, and Tevye finally relents. Then,
pretending to have a prophetic dream, Tevye convinces his wife, Golde, that
Tzeitel would be cursed if she didn’t marry Motel.
Their next eldest, Hodel, falls in love with Perchik, a young university student
and revolutionary from Kiev. Tevye has hired him to educate his girls, exchanging
meals for lessons. Hodel and Perchik break tradition by not asking for Tevye’s
permission to marry, but only for his blessing. After debating
what to do, he decides to give them both.
Chava falls for an Orthodox Christian young man. They don’t ask for Tevye’s
permission or his blessing. They elope. Tevye disowns her.
At the conclusion, the czarist government gives all Jews three days to leave
the district. As Tevye and Golde pack to leave for America, Chava and her husband
make a final attempt at peace, and receive a reluctant “God be with you”
from her father as they depart for Poland.
This bittersweet story, though fictional, is based on true events in Russia.
Fiddler on the Roof was nominated for eight Academy Awards. It won two
and has been dubbed by at least one critic as “the most powerful movie
musical ever made.”
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