G | 3h | Drama, Comedy | 1971
Legend has it that studio executives, apparently unaware that director Norman Jewison was Christian, met him to discuss their film “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971). Upon hearing of their ambitious musical, Jewison said, “You know I’m not Jewish, right?” A wink and a nudge has followed the film ever since, but a twinkle in the eye came first.
It all started with the early 20th-century tragicomic stories by Sholem Aleichem, often called “the Jewish Mark Twain.” Aleichem’s series, “Tevye and his Daughters,” inspired the lesser-known, and decidedly dark, American-Yiddish film, “Tevye” (1939), and later, playwright Joseph Stein’s book. Stein clarified that his story is universal because it’s “about characters who just happened to be Jewish.”…