"Answering A Question (Like I Said I Would)"

Because I am nothing if not true to my word.  A lot of the time.

Not long ago after publishing my post entitled “Three ‘Fiddlers’”, a “Regular Reader” who goes internetically by JED inquired:

“Is it fair to ask how you rate the movie compared to these {theatrical “Three ‘Fiddlers’”} or is that not a fair question?”

First of all, anyone who uses the word “fair” twice in one sentence is okay in my books.  As an inveterate “Fairist”, I am always looking for likeminded compadres to offset the unquestioning ideologues who… you know, this sentence can only get me in trouble, so I will curtail its completion and just say,

“Good on ya, JED.”  (And also I’m out here, and I’m with ya.)

I shall answer JED’s question, embellishing it with answers to questions I was not asked to fill things out, thereby allowing me to believe that I did a decent day’s work.  (Where does it say a person cannot service his readership while simultaneously fostering encouraging feelings of self-worth?)

Let me start with a general prejudice.

With the exception of Singin’ in the Rain (made directly for the screen) and The

Music Man and Chicago… I better stop before my exceptions torpedo my argument… although I am a longstanding stage musical enthusiast, I am not a big fan of movie musicals.

I have never seen a cinematic adaptation of a musical that was as absorbing and exhilarating as its corresponding counterpart on the stage.  For one thing, after a major production number finishes with a crescendoing flourish, rather than the thunderous applause of the theater, there is, in movies…

Deadening silence.

Turning an energizing moment into an anti-climactical letdown.

“With a capital ‘T’

That rhymes with ‘P’

And that stands for

Poo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ool!”

Thud.

The other thing is, the theater is… what’s the appropriate word here?... oh yeah…  

Theatrical.

Hyper-verbal.  Over-the-top.  Larger than life. *  (* Except for the size of the actors.)

Movies, by their technological imperative, are more real – in movie musicals, not necessarily to positive effect.

Example: 

West Side Story – The Movie.

The creative auspices decided in their wisdom that, rather than performing on appropriately designed soundstages, the “Sharks” and the “Jets” should execute their majestic leaps and pirouettes on the graffitied “Mean Streets” of Manhattan.

I can imagine legitimate gang members watching incredulously from the sidelines going:

“We’d nevah do that.”

It was an understandable decision.  “Movies are real.  Let ‘em dance in a real place.”  (Forgetting that real gang members do not dance balletically on the street.  Even in alleys.)

To me, it looked ridiculous.  What came to mind were “delinquents” executing similar choreography never making it back to their clubhouse in one piece.

(Note:  The West Side Story movie won 10 Academy Awards.  So there were apparently people who disagreed with me.)

A similar complaint applies to transfering of Fiddler on the Roof to the big screen.

Beginning with the decision, in the name of “cinematic reality”, to reject Fiddler’s original star, Tony Award-winning Zero Mostel considered to be too “big” (Read:  “theatrical”) for the movie in favor of Israeli actor Topol, adjudged to be more Eastern European-sounding and therefore closer to what the “real Tevye” (a fictional character) would actually have been like. 

Stifling virtually every joke and comedic opportunity in the process.

This determinational rationale was revealed by Fiddler’s director Norman Jewison in a documentary about the movie.  Interesting Side Note:  Norman Jewison is not Jewish.  (Although he is Canadian.)  Demonstrating that you don’t have to be Jewish to make terrible errors in casting.

What was the mistake?

Trading “breathtakingly hilarious” for “tedious and dull.”  In an effort to make things “truer to life.”  (Which may be accurate.  Life is regularly tedious and dull.)

But that’s the movies.  That’s what they do.

Triggering the question:

“Who said musicals had to be real?” 

(Or animated features, for that matter.  There is no way today Mickey Mouse would have four fingers.  Minus some agonizing “backstory” on how the missing digit was tragically lost.)

Summing Up:

But not before throwing this in because I want to and may not receive the opportunity again.  Two years before, in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, and then a second time in Fiddler on the Roof, the once blacklisted Mr. Mostel was asked if he’d be willing to work with director Jerome Robbins who had “named names” during the McCarthy hearings on “Un-American Activities”, to which the assenting Zero replied, “We on the ‘Left’ do not blacklist.”  (It probably helped that Jerome Robbins was a theatrical genius and the previewing Forum was in terrible trouble.)

Okay, now summing up.

Movie musicals have a propensity for “real”, at the excessive cost of wonder and enchantment.  The Fiddler movie fell particular victim to that liability.  Possibly an inevitability, because it’s a movie.  If they wanted “real”, they should have focused on the verisimilitude of the wardrobe, and retained Zero. 

Costumes rarely obliterate laughter.  Bad casting can.

On the other hand, you might want to check out Chicago.

That one, sez this prejudiced reporter,

Is right on the money.