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It’s broad, hammy, a cliché of cultural representation, and bloats a simple story into a three-hour wannabe epic. It’s also hugely entertaining. Jerry Bock’s and Sheldon Harnick’s score is still one Broadway’s sprightliest, beefed up here with superb orchestrations from John Williams.
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Norman Jewison’s rough-hewn, realistic mise-en-scene, closer to Doctor Zhivago than Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, effectively conjures isolating distances, shabby shtetls, familial warmth, and a general melancholia over the nature of things that tempers the schmaltz. Despite the length and simplicity of story, it doesn’t drag because it’s genuinely alive.
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God knows, Zero Mostel must have been something if Topol’s Tevye was considered more naturalistic, but he tackles his part with a bodily force and outsized humanity that defines the biggest mensch around. Paul Michael Glaser is a bit hard to take as the young radical – he’s about as radical as a cream bun – but the rest of the cast handle themselves well. The dream sequence is a vigorous piece of comic fantasia that seems like prototypical Tim Burton, and the conclusion packs a punch all the more effective for being quiet.
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