New Release: Fiddler On the Roof Blu-ray

Fiddler on the Roof movie scene

Topol is on the lookout for tradition in Fiddler on the Roof.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released MGM Home Entertainment‘s celebrated musical Fiddler on the Roof on Blu-ray for the first time as part of a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack on April 5, 2011. It carries a list price of $29.99.

Based on the book and play by Sholem Aleichem, Fiddler on the Roof is set in a Jewish village in pre-revolutionary Russia. The film, directed by Norman Jewison (…And Justice for All) and starring Israeli-born actor Topol (Flash Gordon), tells the story of Tevye the milkman and his family as they try to embrace life and love in their changing world.

Balancing their acceptance of fresh ideas, technological progress and the ever-present danger of religious intolerance, Tevye, his wife and their five daughters make a go of it, just like a fiddler on the roof who “tries to scratch a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck.”

The 1971 film was nominated for a eight Academy Awards and brought home three of them: Best Cinematography (Oswald Morris); Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score (John Williams); and Best Sound (Gordon K. McCallum, David Hildyard).

The new Blu-ray edition offers all the bonus features that were part of previously released DVDs of the film, including the 2007 Two-Disc Collector’s Edition. Here’s the full list of special features:

  • commentary by director Norman Jewison and actor Topol
  • “Norman Jewison, Filmmaker” featurette
  • “Norman Jewison Looks Back” featurette
  • “John Williams: Creating a Musical Tradition” featurette
  • “Songs of Fiddler on the Roof” featurette
  • “Tevye’s Daughters” featurette
  • “Set in Reality Production Design” featurette
  • deleted Song “Any Day Now”
  • storyboard to film comparison
  • Tevye’s Dream Sequence side-by-side comparison
  • trailers and TV spots

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.