Daniel Raim’s admiring documentary uses interviews and movie clips to detail the making of Norman Jewison’s beloved movie musical.
Once, movies released on home media came with an ancillary disc holding a catalog of behind-the-scenes extras. Daniel Raim’s gleefully reverent documentary “Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen” has the feeling of such specials, mingling interviews and movie clips to chronicle the making of Norman Jewison’s 1971 musical movie and salute its enduring success.
Despite his name and a lifelong interest in Judaism, Jewison is Protestant, and he worried that fact would preclude him from directing “Fiddler on the Roof.” Hollywood proved him wrong. Raim is interested in how Jewison sought to preserve the story’s essence while making creative updates, and in doing so “Fiddler’s Journey” touches on issues of Jewish representation but does not interrogate them.
The documentary’s most moving segments involve music. Raim wisely works in many instances of “Fiddler” actors and music department members reciting lines or singing lyrics from the movie, often from memory. Raim intercuts these contemporary moments with the original scenes, accentuating how the power of cinema lies in its ability to endure even as its creators fade.
Other making-of stories — perhaps most notably, “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” — show film sets as sites of chaos, mishaps and folly. Here was a production that instead came together under seemingly minor stress, with all of its players eager to bare their hearts for the camera.
Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
