I read that the Constable was portrayed as a sympathetic(sp?) character in this movie.
"Did you think that I would harm her?"-The Phantom
Sympathetic, & yet, totally pathetic.
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He was a soldier, so he had to follow orders
shareHe clearly was sympathetic but due to him not wanting to lose his job he felt he had to enforce the commands he was given. Some people just can't stand up for what they believe is right.
shareI took it that he was friends with Tevye and knew the orders would be given and followed, if not by him, by someone else. At least he could put a stop to it before the soldiers got out of hand and killed someone.
shareYou have given the best post of this thread.
Actually, I found the original poster's message a bit annoying when he said 'I read that the Constable was portrayed as a sympathetic character', did the original poster watch the movie, is the original poster capable of drawing his own conclusion?
I like the portrayal of the Constable in the movie (the way, more or less, I feel he's written in the stage show). It might be tempting to play him as a villain, but this way is more interesting--a good man who's forced to do bad things because, presumably, he's got his own family to feed. Going against his superiors could mean unemployment and poverty at best...Siberia (or even a firing squad) at worst.
(And after all, would a real villain have taken the trouble to warn Tevye at all? Or implored the villagers not to throw their lives away by trying to fight against their army?)
A few years back, I saw an excellent production of Fiddler at a nearby university. (Never underestimate college productions. They're usually every bit as cheap as a high school production, but the talent is MUCH better. I actually liked this a little more than the Walnut Street Theatre production I saw a few months later.)
In this production, the Constable was in the group at the tavern during "To Life." (So was Fyedka--he started the Russian part of the song.) After the song, he was every bit as drunk as Tevye, and when he gave Tevye the warning about the upcoming "demonstration", he didn't seem to be taking it at all seriously. (He even said "even if you are a Jewish dog" jokingly, and Tevye seemed to take it as tongue-in-cheek as well.) Then, when the actual vandalism happened, the Constable seemed a little bewildered that it was happening after all.
(There were other nice touches in this production. During "Chavaleh" the young Chava--played by the same actress as one of the younger daughters--came out for a "flashback" scene of getting pushed around in Tevye's cart. Before he began the song--after Golde had exited--Tevye shouted in rage and hurled a milk can. Then, at the end of the play when the villagers were exiting, they all had their family names printed on their suitcases. For the purposes of this production, Tevye's surname was "Rabinowitz"--Sholem Aleichem's real last name.)