BUCKET LIST UPDATE No. 147: Watch “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971)

“Fiddler on the Roof” is a movie I’ve heard about for years, but for whatever reason I’d never seen it. I can’t even remember seeing reruns of it on television, and I can’t remember ever seeing it in a video store. I’ve had this movie on my “bucket list” for several years, and, thanks to NetFlix, I finally watched it the other day. It was great.

Directed by Norman Jewison, this movie was released in November 1971 and starred Chaim Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Rosalind Harris and Tutte Lemkow. The film is about a hard working milkman named Tevye, who lives with his wife and five pretty daughters in the small Russian town of Anatevka. Like any father, Tevye wants what’s best for his daughters, but he encounters all sorts of problems when he tries to balance their desires and marriage plans against Jewish traditions.

Other than the fact that this movie is famous, I didn’t know much more about it. I was surprised to learn that the movie is a musical and contains a fair amount of singing by the main characters. Probably the most famous song from the movie is “If I Were a Rich Man,” which was written by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Brock.

This movie was also very funny, and very sad, in parts. I think I laughed out loud more than once, and I also got a lump in my throat once or twice too. The end of the movie is both climactic and emotional, especially if you know anything about what happened to the Jews in Europe during the early 20th Century.

I was also surprised to learn that this movie is based on an earlier play called “Tevye and His Daughters,” which was written by Sholem Aleichem in the 1890s. In all, Aleichem wrote eight Tevye stories, and in each of these story Aleichem supposedly “met” the fictional Tevye, who related the stories to him. These stories were originally written in Yiddish and were later translated into English.

Also, I’ve always wondered about the movie’s title, and I kind of always figured it had to do with the main character. Instead, I came to learn that it referred to a fringe character, a fiddler who’s seen on and off throughout the movie, usually playing from some housetop. Tevye indicates that the fiddler is a good example of many Jews, who were trying to maintain their traditions and way of life in the face of the changing modern world. I couldn’t help but wonder throughout the movie if the musician was also somewhat mentally ill.

If you’ve never seen this movie, I highly recommend it. It was so good that it was nominated for Best Picture at the 1971 Academy Awards, but lost to “The French Connection.” Other nominees that year included “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Last Picture Show” and “Nicholas and Alexandra.”

In the end, how many of you have ever watched “Fiddler on the Roof”? What did you think about it? Let us know in the comments section below.