Fiddler on the Roof and What Makes a Good Movie Musical

In my humble opinion, it’s very hard to make a good movie musical. Musicals and movies are two wonderful ways of telling stories, but I would consider them to be pretty nearly diametrically opposed means of storytelling.

Musicals are inherently a larger-than-life, unrealistic way of telling stories. In day-to-day life, people don’t stop mid-track to sing and perform impromptu dance numbers (more’s the pity). While some musicals exist solely to bring joy and happiness – because let’s face it, light fluffy plots surrounded by gorgeous singing and dancing can be great entertainment – and that’s a legitimate purpose, some musicals try to fulfill a deeper purpose, and are better able to fulfill that purpose by being in musical format.

Music is a powerful means of communication, and can sometimes express things in a visceral way that words can’t. Take the musical of Les Misérables, for instance. It’s trying to tell the story of an enormous book (the book is known within the fandom as the Brick – it’s shaped like one and weighs like one) within the span of just a few hours. Logically speaking, it would seem to make more sense to adapt the story into a play, since you can fit a lot more dialogue and story in when you’re talking than when you’re singing. But as it turns out, while it might not give you a perfect idea of the book’s story, the musical works really, really, well and actually preserves the story of the book much better than a lot of non-musical adaptations.

That’s because a well-written musical can express emotions in one three-minute song that a writer in a novel can spend pages trying to evoke. I can think of few speeches they could have given to Jean Valjean that would have explained his bewildered frame of mind after the Bishop’s kindness to him than the frantic, breathless “What Have I Done?” If it comes to that, I can think of few speeches which would explain the complicated blend of joy and sorrow that a parent feels watching their little girl getting married better than the hauntingly beautiful “Sunrise, Sunset” in Fiddler on the Roof. By telling the story in a way that is on the surface level unrealistic – namely, by having characters break into song in order to express their deepest feelings – a well-written musical has the ability to portray reality more accurately than a more “realistic” approach would have.

Now, the vehicle for this unique way of telling stories is primarily the music itself, both lyrically and melodically. Although the actors are certainly important in a musical, they are, in a way, just the accessories which make the music possible. A musical should have good actors playing the parts, of course, but the actors aren’t really the main point. If you paid tickets to see a Broadway production of your favorite musical and the main actor couldn’t sing, you probably wouldn’t be happy, no matter how good an actor he was per se. Acting is part of what makes a musical good, but it’s not the most important part of what makes a musical good.

All that being said, the case is muddled when a musical is adapted to a movie. Film is inherently a more subtle storytelling medium, and one which calls for realism. (Except animation, which in my opinion is a genre of storytelling all its own – but another day for that discussion.) Whereas musical theatre calls for a larger-than-life depiction of the world, film calls for the opposite. It calls for subtlety. In a film, all the focus is on the actors themselves. Dialogue has an important part to play in the storytelling, of course, but often in a movie the way that an actor delivers a line, or what their body language adds to what is spoken, is just as important as the dialogue itself. It is the actors more than anything who are telling the story.

This is much closer to real life than musical theater is. And while there are some movies that are deliberately unrealistic, most movies do try to maintain a level of realism. When you want to make a movie of a musical, you therefore end up with a certain clashing of media. A movie musical cannot have its characters express their emotions only in “realistic” ways, because singing about your mental state isn’t realistic.

Different movie musicals have different ways of dealing with that problem. Sometimes, as in the 2012 movie musical of Les Misérables, they try to deal with the problem by making the characters sing in a more natural and realistic way. But I don’t think that’s a good solution, because that takes away a large point of the story being told in musical format in the first place; if it’s a musical, the music itself has a huge part to play in telling the story. Compare, for instance, a concert version of “What Have I Done?” with the film’s version. The attempt to make the song more natural – in other words, to put the acting above the music in importance – makes you lose a lot of the original melody and a lot of the original way that the song was constructed. But the song was written the way it was for a reason. The musical progression in “What Have I Done?” is perhaps just as important in revealing Valjean’s mental state as the actual words he’s saying.

On the other hand, movie musicals can also go the other way and sacrifice good and realistic film-making in the attempt to change as little as possible from the original musical. For instance, I find “Waitin’ for My Dearie” from Brigadoon to feel overly staged, with all the girls in the background just quietly standing around listening to the song. Or movie musicals can use techniques which feel perfectly natural on stage but take you out of the story’s world when done in a movie – for instance, Nellie suddenly turning to the camera and addressing her song to the audience halfway through “A Wonderful Guy” in South Pacific.

For a movie musical to be both a good movie and a good musical, then, realism, good film-making, and good acting all need to be prized, but so do the musical theater aspects. The music shouldn’t be toned down in the attempt to make it natural – because a musical will never be natural; that’s just not its place, and it also ruins the whole point of the story being a musical – but the directors should also not be afraid to make changes to account for the change in medium. And in my opinion, a movie musical that achieves that balance extremely well is Fiddler on the Roof. 

(In fact, having immersed myself in Fiddler the past couple days in order to write this post, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s edged out Mary Poppins as my second favorite musical. Sorry, Mary Poppins. I still love you.)

Now, I’m going to try really hard to make this part of the post orderly and not let it just turn into a gushy mess. If I don’t succeed, I’m sorry. I’m doing my best.

First of all, and crucially, the music is all performed beautifully. I think that every song in the movie maintains the emotional punch that it was meant to evoke in the stage version. And indeed, the fact that the music in the movie is so powerful speaks to how well the musical was written in the first place. Fiddler on the Roof is just a really good musical to start with, which is an important first step in making a good movie out of it.

However, as it is a movie, it’s important that we get emotion not just from the music itself, but from the actors too…and we do. We get all the acting subtleties that flesh out movie characters and make them feel real, but it’s never at odds with the musical theater element of the story. Even in choreographed musical numbers like “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” we get good acting and subtle characterization along with the flamboyance of the song. (Side-note, but I love the fact that while all the main cast are, obviously, very good singers, they also sound like normal people and not like musical theater stars. It feels very fitting for this story about ordinary working people. I appreciate, too, that while all the daughters are certainly pretty, they don’t look like Hollywood movie stars, they look like ordinary young women.)

Although all the actors and actresses are great, I have to give special mention to Topol as Tevye, because I think his performance in this movie is absolutely fantastic. Tevye is an easy character to go overboard with or make too much of a caricature, but his portrayal here is so layered and fleshed-out. What we get is an imperfect character, certainly, but a man who is just trying his best to figure out which of the traditions that form his whole existence are necessary and which can be disregarded, what God wants of him, and what he needs to do to best serve his family. He’s a deeply relatable and deeply sympathetic protagonist, and honestly one of the best-developed musical protagonists I can think of.

Fiddler also takes advantage of its medium in that it does some things with the songs that you wouldn’t be able to do in a stage version. For instance, “Sunrise, Sunset” is presented as character’s thoughts during the wedding scene – which I’m sure is how we’re supposed to interpret at least parts of it in the stage show, they’re just no way to show it – and I think that worked so well. It’s a change which respects the move to a more realistic medium, but in a way that doesn’t interfere with the music. (And the scene is also just so beautiful and chill-inducing and ack, I love it so, so much.)

In fact, the movie makes a fairly drastic change from the source material in that there is an important aspect of the movie-plot (which I shall not mention because spoilers) that was not present in the original musical and that they added into the movie. I think it was an excellent decision to add it, though, because it provides a climax for a certain storyline and its exploration of certain themes really adds some extra depth to the plot as a whole. As someone who’s never actually seen all of the stage version, I can’t help but think the story would feel lacking without the movie’s addition.

Really, all the storytelling – that told through music and that which isn’t – is very well-done. The plot is compelling, the characters are compelling, and the themes of the movie – the inescapable march of time, the attempt to discern how far we can allow tradition to be overturned, and how much we are even capable of stopping its overturn when we want to – are such important and thought-provoking ones. They’re messy, complicated questions, and the movie treats them as such. This movie really proves that old Hollywood musicals don’t have to just be light fluffy romances, and I appreciate that so much.

I will say, to be fair, that Fiddler on the Roof has one or two musical theater conceits which maybe would have worked better onstage. I know I just complained about Nellie breaking the fourth wall in South Pacific, but I do have to say that I think it works better when Tevye does it in Fiddler. It doesn’t come out of the blue in the same way, you see; it’s at the beginning of the movie, when we are being introduced to our surroundings and the world that the story takes place in. I can’t decide if I like the technique they use of “pausing” everything around him when Tevye is holding an inner dialogue with himself – I think it works really well sometimes (i.e. when he’s trying to decide if he should let Tzeitel marry Motel) but less well other times (i.e. when he’s talking to Lazar Wolf). But that’s only a small complaint in any case.

So here’s the condensed version of my thoughts: generally speaking, I think making a good movie musical requires a delicate balance of placing the story in a grounded and realistic world, but without letting that be at odds with the larger-than-life musicality of it, since that’s an integral part of telling the story. I think Fiddler on the Roof manages that admirably. Perhaps the reason that they manage this balance is simply that they let the music speak for itself while making sure to pair it with good acting performances. Or perhaps it fits this story particularly, with its own seemingly incongruous mix of light and dark. Whichever it is, I think more movie musicals should look here as inspiration for how to make a movie musical everything it can and should be.

This post was written for We Love Musicals Week over at Hamlette’s Soliloquy; hop over there to join the fun!

Do you agree or disagree with my ramblings? What do you think are some of the best movie musicals? Have you seen Fiddler on the Roof? Do you agree with me about its fantabulousness?