The extras are spread across the two discs in this set, and those who own the previous special edition release might be a little irked to see just how much of the supplemental material here has been ported from that set. At any rate, things start off with a genuinely interesting audio commentary courtesy of director Norman Jewison and star Topol. Considering that the length of the film is three hours you'd think that there would be some dead air to content with but surprisingly enough, this is a very active and interesting track. If you've seen the movie countless times, give this track a shot as it's quite in-depth and covers the making of the film from both in front of the camera and from behind it. The two men seem to enjoy each other's company and there's a very nice sense of humor throughout the track and while Jewison does dominate the talk, Topol definitely gets in his fair share of stories. Jewison covers casting, the difficulties in bringing a musical to the big screen and the various cast and crew members he worked with on the project while Topol's points focus more on his fellow cast members and some of the musical bits. All in all it's quite well rounded and genuinely interesting.

Up next is the 1971 Canadian Film Board documentary, Norman Jewison – Filmmaker (again, taken from the last DVD release) which is a fifty-minute documentary that covers Jewison's career up through the production of Fiddler On The Roof. Directed by Douglas Jackson the majority of this documentary focuses on Fiddler's production but alongside plenty of footage of the man on set doing his job, we also get to hear him talk about some of his earlier projects and how he feels about the film industry at the time that this documentary was shot. This is a nice mix of fly on the wall behind the scenes footage and formal interview clips and it gives us a good look at Jewison's methods as a director and a few interesting glimpses at his personality as well. He comes across as under a lot of pressure from the producers and it shows when he rips into some of the crew on set at one point – there was a lot of money wrapped up in the film and one gets the impression that he's very cognizant of the fact that had this film flopped it would have killed his career.

Another documentary carried over from the previous special edition entitled Norman Jewison Looks Back is here, and it's broken up into five chapters that more or less explain what is covered: On Directing (which is simply Jewison explaining his thoughts on what a director should do), Strongest Memory (the director talks about seeing the show on Broadway for the first time), Biggest Challenge (Jewison discusses some of the obstacles he ran into while working on the project), On Casting (where he talks about who was cast in which part and why) and A Classic (wherein her covers how he feels about having worked on a film that is now considered a classic). Some of the material that's in here has been covered in the commentary and the first documentary but given that this is more modern than the 1971 documentary it's worth checking out just to get a different perspective from Jewison on his work. Combined, these five bits total roughly ten-minutes in length.

Jewison appears again, reading the Sholom Aleichem Stories over top of some storyboards and film stills that show the filmed version of these stories playing out. Jewison also shows up for Historical Background which is a segment where he talks about the real life events that inspired Fiddler On The Roof over top of some great photographs courtesy of Ann Reis. This was carried over from the previous DVD release.

A Storyboard-To-Film Comparison contains two distinct still gallery sections where we see all manner of storyboard and production art. Also included in this section are comparisons between the storyboards and the filmed versions of the following scenes from the movie: Tradition, Matchmaker, Introduction To Miracle Of Miracles, Tevye's Dream and Lazar Wolf And Tevye. This was carried over from the previous DVD release.

New to this release is Interview With John Williams: Creating A Musical Tradition where we see some interview segments with Williams and a few of the people that he collaborated on for this project. At twelve-minutes in length this isn't as in-depth as it maybe should have been given the importance of Williams' contribution to the film, but it is nice to see it acknowledged and touched on, however briefly.

Another new featurette entitled An Interview with Tevye's Daughters is, as you could probably guess from the title, a collection of interviews with Rosalind Harris (who talks about how Bette Midler was passed over for the role), Michele Marsh and Neva Small. This is fairly interesting and again, as it starts off with some comments from the casting director. It's nice to see these actresses acknowledged as they all play fairly important roles in the production. At sixteen-minutes in total it doesn't go into an insane amount of detail and it might have been nice to have the three record a commentary track together regardless, they've got some interesting stories to tell about their time on set and about why they were chosen for the parts that they played in the film.

A third new featurette, Set In Reality - Production Design, is an excellent ten-minute look at what went into making the sets for the movie by way of an interview with designer Robert Boyle and some great behind the scenes footage and photographs. Boyle talks about the specific needs of the production and how he and his team tried to address them and throughout we get a peak at how this was accomplished. It's a little on the short side but it's an excellent and really interesting segment.

The last new supplement for this release is Songs of Fiddler on the Roof a fifteen-minute interview with Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick where they cover what went into writing the music that has gone on to become so famous. It's interesting to hear how they collaborated on various compositions and what they were going for with a few specific pieces of music.

Rounding out the extra features are the Any Day Now deleted song (the song exists but it was never filmed, though the introduction was and it's here) and the full color version of Tevye's Dream Sequence (with an optional video introduction from Jewison and a side by side comparison option), extensive production notes (this feature actually shows you scans of the original casting notes, make up notes, things like that – much more interesting than you might expect!), a gallery of production photos and artwork, a gallery of promotional materials, three trailers, a teaser trailer, two television spots, production credits, animated menus and chapter stops. The two discs are housed inside a plastic keepcase, which in turn rests inside a cardboard slipcase containing identical cover art. These were all carried over from the previous DVD release. Inside the keepcase is an insert with a two page essay on the film (no author is credited) and with the chapter listings printed on the back.

Fiddler On The Roof is just a fantastic film in every way possible. If the running time is a little long, so be it because the movie makes up for it with some truly beautiful musical numbers and some gorgeous sets and cinematography. The story is genuinely inspiring and uplifting and the performances are uniformly strong throughout. MGM's new two-disc set doesn't offer enough new supplemental material to earn a Collector's Talk rating for those who already own the previous special edition release from a few years back, but for anyone interested in the film who doesn't already own a copy, it certainly comes highly recommended.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.