Tevye



Loosely based on stories by renowned Jewish writer Sholom Aleichem (whose work also inspired the stage play and motion picture Fiddler on the Roof), Tevye (also known as Tevya and Tevye der Milkhiker) is the story of a Jewish Ukranian milkman, his wife and their daughters, one of whom falls in love and marries the son of a Christian peasant. Tevye's paternal love causes tremendous inner conflict with his devout faith and loyalty to tradition, a foreshadowing of the growing conflict between Russian Christians and Jews in the early 1900s. The Yiddish language film was written and directed by and starred Maurice Schwartz who had performed the role of Tevye on stage two decades earlier.

Tevye was added to the National Film Registry in 1991; it was the first non-English-language picture selected for that honor.

Watch a clip at the National Film Preservation Foundation.