Originally divided by an interval, the second act brings only tragedy for Tevye, who faces the loss of his home to tsarist persecution and his two daughters to a new world. Indeed, it is Hodel’s farewell to “Far from the Home I Love” that moved Topol most. “She doesn’t speak, she just sings the song, and he understands every single feeling that she has. And he knows he won’t see her anymore.”
As the film’s emotional fulcrum, Topol’s portrayal of the pious milkman
has led people to ask about his real persona. “He doesn’t act, but lives the part and you can actually see his heart breaking,” says his youngest daughter, Adi, who played Chava with him at the Palladium in 1994.
hen the film adaptation of
Fiddler on the Roof opened, revered critic Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and said director Norman Jewison “has made as good a film as can be made from the material”. Ebert, now deceased, thought the storyline was “quite simply boring”, which decried the work of its original author, Sholem Aleichem, and raised doubts about Ebert’s Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
With global acclaim from all other reviewers, three Oscars, multiple nominations (including Best Actor for Chaim Topol) and a cumulative $83.3 million at the box office, the enduring appeal of this movie is irrefutable.
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Whereâs it on? kinoklassikafoundation.org
The Colour of Pomegranates (1969)
The new year hasnât been knocking us flat with good news, but the announcement this week that the Kino Klassika Foundation is launching a new streaming service in February is something film fans will want to put their arms around. The current streaming landscape isnât hot on Russian cinema, but Klassiki promises to offer UK audiences a permanent library of 60 titles from Russia and the Caucasus, including both classics and more obscure gems. The initiative has come about because of the large audiences that have been drawn to the free weekly films being posted on the foundationâs website during lockdown. Those are still happening, so you can get a taste of the kind of thing Klassiki will be hosting by viewing this weekâs offering, which just happens to be one of the great Soviet-era films: Sergei Parajanovâs The Colour of Pomegranates. Not that this poetic and stylised ac