The concepts may be potent, with morbid historical lessons to be imparted, and the script intelligent, with a knack for elucidating Jewish plights and defiance under tsarist rule, but they’re nonetheless considerably drawn-out.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Feb 6, 2025

Topol, Israel's best-known actor, played Tevye... delivering an unforgettable and barnstorming (literally — see the If I Were a Rich Man number) performance in the film.

| Feb 28, 2024

Fiddler on the Roof, stunning, joyful, jubilant and emotion stirring, is an artistic triumph for Norman Jewison.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 17, 2023

The movie offers the pleasures of big, bold strokes; it's American folk opera, commercial style.

| May 16, 2023

[Fiddler on the Roof] has been done not only with such artistry but also with such evident love, devotion, integrity and high aspiration that watching it is a kind of duplex pleasure.

| May 16, 2023

What Jewison has whipped up here is a sprawling, broad-shouldered family entertainment jam-packed with lively songs; warm, funny situations, and endearing characters.

| May 16, 2023

What really counts is that this universal story of tradition, of generations, of man and God surmounts the inevitable and is in many ways refreshed. Even Tevye is somehow refurbished by Topol.

| May 16, 2023

Topol is all shrugs and sweet ingratiation. He even gets along with Cossacks. As a result the movie is soft and sugary right at its center and, excepting Leonard Frey... all performances struck me as rather gingerly.

| May 16, 2023

Yes, "Fiddler" on film is a full-blown, three-hour movie musical... But within the limitation of that most treacherous film form, director Norman Jewison has fashioned a sumptuous entertainment laden with happiness and tears... and taste.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 16, 2023

It pains me to report that the longest-running musical in Broadway history (and, for my money, the best) has been pickled -- rather than adapted for the screen -- in a brine of roadshow mediocrity.

| May 16, 2023

A strong story has been reinforced with memorable music and fine acting. The result is an unpretentious effort at pleasant family entertainment.

| May 16, 2023

A solid and likable film with some moments of genuine pathos. Whether it could have succeeded without Topol's extraordinary performance as Tevye the milkman is another matter.

| May 16, 2023

To Mr. Jewison, Topol and a splendid company of actors and technicians: The movie is better than the play.

| May 16, 2023

There are compensations even for those who love the stage musical too much to see it change. They're not unlike Tevye, in this regard.

| May 16, 2023

The film stands alone not as an imitation of Fiddler on the Roof, but another version of it. And it is delightfully successful.

| May 16, 2023

Jewison's basic problem is typical of Hollywood projects gone astray: rather than adhere to a simple story (which "Fiddler" is), he has opted to fiddle around with bigness. Wide screen. Vast vistas. Camera trickery. Hyped-up music.

| May 16, 2023

Conductor John Williams most assuredly has earned himself an Academy Award for his adaptation of the original Broadway score. He and Alexander Courage supply rich, imaginative orchestrations to the Sheldon Harnick - Jerry Bock songs.

| May 16, 2023

Nearly everything that was the center of the stage-play's very subtle charm, the core of its wisdom and its warmth, has been flattened and forced which is, of course, what happens when the focus of the audience's vision is directed by the camera.

| May 16, 2023

Fiddler on the Roof is a triumph as a screen musical, resplendent visually, gloriously mellifluous, joyous, moving and filled with great characters and fine acting... However, it does not duplicate the poignance "Fiddler" achieved as a stage musical.

| May 16, 2023

Fiddler on the Roof is one of the best musicals ever written, and the film version is one of the best films of a musical ever made. The fact is, however, that... I did not like it as much as any of the numerous versions I've seen on the stage.

| May 16, 2023