THE MOVIE

This is the story of a small community which is devestated by oppression. A small Jewish community, where the old faith is the foundation of the community.

While being a musical masterpiece, the story is centred around Tevye (Topol), the local milkman and the love for his family. It shows the love of one family and how they survive being driven out of their homeland.

As a small town isolated from the rest of the world, they receive minimal news from a newspaper which only one man in the town can read.

As Tevye's daughters grow up, they hope for a perfect match from the matchmaker. With their own expectations, their parents must except a changing world and that old traditions are being challenged by their children.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

This is another issue on a classic film onto DVD. Warner have a mixed-bag at how well they pull this off and Fiddler On The Roof is one of the better ones.

The movie is from 1971, so a few little niggly film faults are to be expected. There are a reasonable number of film artefacts such as specs and dust. Telecine wobble was kept to an absolute minimum - some modern films could learn from this.

The shadow detail is a little lacking in clarity making the film feel a little 'washed-out'. Some scenes are excellent, other not so crash hot. For example, in chapter 5 when Topol sings "If I were a rich man", the picture is excellent. No compression or film faults to be found. But then in chapter 6, the screen is riddled with compression artefacts. A bit topsy terby if you ask me.

Colours are pretty much muted throughout, but this suits the mood of the film, so I assume it is intentional.

Compression faults were to be seen here and there. No big deal and certainly not bad enough to trash the whole transfer.

This is nearly a 3 hour movie, so at least we got it all on 1 side of the disc (shame we can't say that about ALL Warner discs).

The picture is anamorphically enhanced (to my surprise), but I can't help but feel if they were so pushed for space why they didn't drop anamorphic and trade it for a better quality picture encoded at a high rate.

Audio:

Another remastered soundtrack here. The score has been remixed into 5.1 channels for this release and, as is usual with this style of movie, the music is where the new soundtrack is apparent.

Surrounds are used for ambience in the music score, and the front soundstage is used to widen the experience. This is pretty much the common thing to do when remastering soundtracks at the moment.

I'm not sure if the purests will agree that this works, but it certainly gives the film more "feeling" and emotion.

Interestingly the dialogue is NOT restricted to the center channel, but rather spread across the front soundstage.

Sub-woofer usage, like the surrounds, is called into use for the musical score only.

THE EXTRAS

Theatrical Trailer - Provides a nice overview of the movie and introduces the catchy music used in this amazing movie.

Commentary track - 3 hours worth of listening to Topol mostly talk about what happened on set and stories about most of the poeple who were involved on and off set. Moderatly interesting.

SUMMARY

If you enjoy musicals, this is another one for the collection. I enjoyed the music and the storyline is very powerful.

You have to applaude the fact that such a movie is being preserved by being put on DVD. This is a movie with a storyline that we should never forget.

I give this movie the thumbs up.