jjgittes Blog

Under discussion:

Fiddler on the Roof  (1971)

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF has been a beloved musical for decades and the movie, which aired this past Saturday on Reel 13, was enormously successful when it first came out in 1971. I, however, have never been interested in the show. Though I do like some of the more famous songs ("Matchmaker" is catchy, "If I Were a Rich Man" is universally appealing and "Sunrise, Sunset" is beautifully written), I have always found the overall show to be pretty dull and very frustrating in terms of its repetitive nature.

Director Norman Jewison (who also directed last week's THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING) did manage to do some interesting things in his adaptation, however. I liked how, on several occasions, he opted out of having characters sing out on screen. Instead, he used their voices non-diegetically, as if they were thinking the song in their heads. Even though the song itself is incredibly annoying, he turned the "Tradition" number into an effective montage introducing us to life in Anatevka. I also liked how Jewison handled the iconography of the fiddler itself. In the show, it's a bit heavy handed, but Jewison shoots it just right, keeping the fiddler mostly in background or shadow and cutting to him infrequently enough that he is an effective symbol for their way of life – subtle enough while maintaining its accessibility. To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of the talking to the camera device (has any film been able to pull this off except for FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF?). Additionally, Jewison employed the zoom lens several times throughout the film, a common tactic in the late 60's/early 70's, but it felt out of place in a period piece such as this.

I was surprised at how weak many of the performances were – much of the cast had an air of theatricality about them, as if they were plucked right off the stage and never got accustomed to screen acting. The mother and the eldest daughter (a dead ringer for Barbra Streisand) are two exceptions. The primary exception, of course, is Topol as Tevye. Tevye is one of the most iconic characters is musical history – the male equivalent of Mama Rose – and Topol knocks it out of the park. He is funny, charmingly foolish, boisterous without being obnoxious, extremely caring and tender with a booming, powerful (singing and speaking) voice that perfectly fits this larger-than-life character. It ranks as one of the all-time best movie musical performances.

In spite of all these positive qualities, FIDDLER the film still doesn't seem to overcome the flaws of FIDDLER the play. The second act is mostly strong with many emotionally impactful moments, but the build-up to get there is way too long and too slow. Several scenes in the film drag on mercilessly and some seem superfluous altogether (I don't think we needed the "Wonder of Wonders" number, for example). I imagine that Jewison and his team felt some pressure to include everything so the stage fans wouldn't be disappointed, but their priority in adapting the musical has to be to the film itself. When it's transferred to celluloid, it's a new animal and there are a different set of rules. More than anything, what FIDDLER really needed before relocating from Broadway was a good diet – to trim all the fat.

Under discussion:

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!  (1966)

Russia and Communism seems to be of particular interest to the Reel 13 programmers what with this film, ONE, TWO, THREE last week and FIDDLER ON THE ROOF next week. Perhaps they’ll want to replace BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK on April 19th with DOCTOR ZHIVAGO or WAR AND PEACE – just to keep the streak going.

Not that I’m complaining really. This film, in particular, which I was seeing for the first time, was quite good and much more effective at political satire than ONE, TWO, THREE. It is frequently funny, led by the Oscar-nominated performance by Alan Arkin as a Russian sailor stranded with eight comrades on an island in the Cape Cod area. As a matter of fact, it’s almost disturbingly funny, given that the hysteria of the townspeople in the film feels all too real and possible (though heightened here for comic effect). Even if the Russian-as-bad-guy theme is old news, it can easily be substituted with some sort of terrorist threat, which makes the film just as relevant today as it was in 1966.

The film isn’t without its hiccups, however. It’s a little slow-paced for a comedy, though I realize it’s a very different kind of comedy. There are a good number of clunky scenes to balance out the ones that hit all the right notes. The love story, for example, between the young, blonde Russian and the blonde babysitter is EXTREMELY lame and should have either been paid attention to more (the babysitter has something like four lines total) or abandoned completely. Additionally, I think Carl Reiner was miscast. He may be a comic genius, but more as a writer and sometimes a straight man on the variety show circuit. He never has been that strong of an actor and that is proven once again with his uninspired performance in THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING.

Still and all, the film was really strong and you have to really give a lot of credit to director Norman Jewison, who, in spite of a very impressive track record, isn’t much talked about among the elite filmmaking talents of the last forty years. Given that April is, to some degree, Norman Jewison month on Reel 13 (He also directed next week’s FIDDLER), I got to thinking about his canon. I’ve decided that what’s most impressive about his body of work is how eclectic it is in terms of style (he is very good at altering his style to fit the story he’s crafting) and genre (he can do comedy, satire, drama, fairy tale and musicals). There is a connection in his work in terms of theme – he seems to be particularly interested in social injustice, whether it be racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism or what have you. Another consistency I noticed in the Norman Jewison oeuvre is a series of outstanding performances, too numerous to list here. So what we have here is a filmmaker that adapts his style to the story instead of vice versa with a particular focus on performance and character development. He may not be as celebrated as Hitchcock, Ford, Scorsese or Spielberg, but it seems to me if we had a few more young filmmakers emulating Jewison instead of Tarantino, we’d be a lot better off.

Under discussion:

One, Two, Three  (1961)

To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of ONE, TWO, THREE before I saw the trailer on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOiDKpNqOE4&feature=user) for its airing on Reel 13 this past Saturday. It’s easy to see, though, how the film got lost in the shuffle of time in spite of its big names (James Cagney and Billy Wilder). Its broad comedy style feels very dated and probably foreign to most modern audiences. Similarly, its political references to Cold War issues and sentiments (How many do you think got the reference when one of the Russian characters started to bang his shoe on a table?), which feature prominently in the plot, don’t have the resonance they would have had back then.

The film takes place in 1961, the year of its release, and features James Cagney as the head of the Germany branch of Coca-Cola. The plot starts to unfold when his boss – the CEO of Coke – asks Cagney to look after his daughter during her trip to Berlin. The daughter (Pamela Tiffin) is an unruly (and dim) Southern belle who gets herself into trouble when she gets involved with a Communist from the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. And it’s up to the resourceful Cagney to bail her out (in order to save his own job).

The deft hand of Wilder counterbalances the potential corniness of the plot. In the world he creates, most of the events that transpire seem plausible, in spite of some of the conveniences. It all fits within the style. I only wish some of the supporting characters were a little more drawn out. Tiffin doesn’t have much to work with at all, which is problematic, because the daughter character is the catalyst. Her Communist lover is a little more three-dimensional on the page, but is unfortunately played by Horst Buchholz, who is as equally bad here as he was in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. It’s Cagney, though, that is the real engine of the film. His machine gun delivery is in perfect alignment with the verbose and fast-paced screenplay. His energy and presence are the foundation for all the things that make the film work.

At times, the film feels like a sitcom. Some of the wacky plot coincidences are something you might see on THREE’S COMPANY or SEINFELD. It also reminded me of some other Wilder films like THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and THE FORTUNE COOKIE in the sense that they never seem to be able to escape their theatricality - One, Two, Three was based on a play and I imagine it would be riotous on stage. On screen, though, about a quarter of the jokes fall flat because successful comedy films move at a different rhythm that they do in theater. Another quarter of the jokes are dead air because they are references to things that are lost on modern audiences.

The remaining half, however, work anywhere anytime and most of the belly laughs in the film, in true keeping with the tradition of farce, come in the zany final act. For most of the film, I felt detached, bored and a little put off by the silliness of the style and the borderline offensive xenophobia (the film is plays up on archaic stereotypes of both Russians and Germans). In the last thirty minutes, however, Comedy General Cagney leads his troops in a race against the clock where all kinds of mayhem ensues. Several storylines intersect with each other and work toward satisfying resolution with breakneck speed. It takes ONE, TWO, THREE about an hour to really get moving, which is probably way too long, but given there are moments of the film that still make me laugh days later, I almost wonder if it wasn’t worth the wait.