When the restored Tevye was released in1979-1980, critics were unanimous in their opinion that they had found the screen Tevye in MauriceSchwartz, the great Yiddish actor-director. Rob Baker wrote for Soho Weekly News: "One has only tocompare the film to Fiddler on the Roof...to appreciate Schwartz's fine and subtle interpretation." Tevye theDairyman is a kind of Jewish Everyman, struggling to hold on to that which defines him against the winds ofchange. The film, adapted from a stage play written by Sholem Aleikhem himself, and based on his famousstories, focuses on two crises in Tevye's life: the conversion of his daughter Khave (Miriam Riselle) toChristianity in order to marry a Russian intellectual, and the expulsion of the Jews from the small Russiantown that was Tevye's birthplace. Rob Baker: "Schwartz's Tevye emerges as one of the moreextraordinary performances in film history: A failed patriarch in almost every sense of the word, henonetheless keeps going, stubborn, stoical, resilient-at once noble and humble. He may be sexist,self-righteous and (sometimes) dead wrong...but his foibles only serve to humanize him, to lend the ironicresonance of real life to what otherwise would be just an elusive symbol...Tevye is a pastoral gemcomparable to much of the best of Pagnol (and) Renoir...Filmed in Long Island, the film's accuracy incapturing the cultural patina of the day-to-day life of Russian Jews is striking." Please note: Tevye is repeated Sunday, November 26 at 7:00.