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Tevya (film)
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Wikipedia article
'Tevya' is a 1939 American Yiddish film, based on author Sholem Aleichem's stock character Tevye the Dairyman, also the subject of the 1964 musical 'Fiddler on the Roof'. It was the first non-English language picture selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
Cast
* Maurice Schwartz - Tevya
* Miriam Riselle - Chava
* Rebecca Weintraub - Golde
* Paula Lubelski - Tzeitel
* Leon Liebgold - Fedya
* Vicki Marcus - Shloimele
* Betty Marcus - Perele
* Julius Adler - Aleksei the Priest.
Production
The script was adapted by Marcy Klauber and Schwartz from the Sholem Aleichem play based on his own book. Schwartz directed the film, which was based on two works by Schwartz from 1919: the silent film 'Broken Barriers' ('Khavah') and the stage production of 'Tevye'.'Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds' by J Hobermann. New York, 1991, . p.53-54.'Laughter Through Tears: The Yiddish Cinema' by Judith N Goldberg. 1983. . p.97-98.
The production was filmed at Biograph Studios in New York City and on a farm in Jericho, Long Island, New York. Midway through the shooting of the film, on August 23, 1939, Hitler seized Danzig and a Nazi invasion of Poland was imminent. These and other events in Europe affected the actors, many of whom had family in Poland. The filming was completed nevertheless.Frieden, Ken, "A Century in the Life of Sholem Aleichem's 'Tevye'" (1993). Syracuse University. Paper 46.
The story focuses primarily on the plotlines from Sholem Aleichem's stories "Chava" and "Lekh-Lekho (Get Thee Out)" but provides a definite ending rather than Sholom Aleichem's ambiguous ending. In this version of 'Tevya', as the Jews are expelled from their 'shtetl', Chava who had previously converted to Christianity to marry, leaves her husband, returns to her family and to Judaism. It is felt that the anti-Semitism of the time influenced Schwartz to provide this ending.
Post-production
Long thought to be a lost film, a print was discovered in 1978. The same story was the basis of the 1964 stage musical 'Fiddler on the Roof' and its 1971 film version, though the fate of Chava in the ending was changed for the change in attitudes by that time.
In 1991, 'Tevya' was the first non-English language film to be named "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
See also
*List of rediscovered films
References
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