Review: Documentary looks back with fresh insights on ‘Fiddler on the Roof’

Last fall marked the 50th anniversary of the release of director Norman Jewison’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” the 1971 film adaptation of the Tony-winning 1964 stage musical. An engaging new documentary offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie, which was nominated for eight Oscars and won three. In the words of “Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen,” it isn’t just a documentary about the film’s transition from stage to screen, but a “chronicle of a spirited creative quest.”

That’s a mouthful – but maybe not undeserved. “Fiddler’s Journey” aims to tell a story that delves into more than creative and technical details. Although it is also about those details. Director Daniel Raim was nominated for an Oscar for his 2000 documentary short “The Man on Lincoln’s Nose,” which profiled “Fiddler on the Roof’s” production designer Robert Boyle (also known for his distinctive work on films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” “The Birds” and “Marnie”).

And “Fiddler’s Journey” does include some tasty, if typical tidbits: how the film was shot through nylon stockings stretched over the lens, for instance, to create its earth-toned palette; how the look of its shtetl setting, in the fictional village of Anatevka, based on the stories of writer Sholem Aleichem, was inspired by Roman Vishniac’s acclaimed photos of pre-World War II Jewish life in Eastern Europe; and how the film’s version of Tsarist Russia was all recreated in the town of Lekenik, in the former Yugoslavia, under Communist President Josip Broz Tito.

Oh, and how the now 95-year-old Jewison – who appears in the film in both archival and more recent interviews – isn’t even Jewish. It’s not that the director of one of the most iconic Jewish films of the 20th century should have been Jewish (or ever represented himself as such). But many people, including some associated with the 1971 film, assumed that he was. With a name like his, Jewison jokes, “even I thought I was Jewish.” But there’s a larger point that “Fiddler’s Journey” is trying to make.

On one level, it explores how “Fiddler” fits into Jewison’s cinematic career, one characterized by a commitment to social justice that took off with his Oscar-winning 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night.” But the heart of the documentary’s message has to do with the film’s universality. “Fiddler’s Journey” won the audience award for documentary at this year’s Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, but its appeal – like the appeal of the 1971 film – extends beyond a preconceived niche or demographic.

The themes of “Fiddler on the Roof” are simple: family, tradition and its opposite, change. Also: how life can sometimes feel as precarious as a musician trying to scratch out a violin tune without breaking his neck.

Those are notions that, as this winning little film reminiscence makes clear, are common to us all.