Tevye as Galileo, script by Brecht

What a surprise to find this movie from 1974!  Topol, the actor who played Tevya in the film version of "Fiddler on the Roof", plays Galileo in this wonderfully accurate account starting from the events of 1609.  If you've read "The Starry Messenger" you will be delighted with how well this adheres to the specific details.


Galileo (1974) by Bertolt Brecht, starring Topol


Of course I didn't mind the first dramatic license one bit, as the film opens with the delivery of an Armillary Sphere to Galileo's household and proceeds to give us the only explanation of these device I have ever seen in a dramatic film:

And naturally, Galileo has an Astrolabe hanging on his wall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(1974_film)

It is free for streaming if you have Amazon Prime.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009UGN1CE

I'm about halfway through this 2-hour production.  So far, the amount of detail it goes into about the handful of observations from those first nights in 1609 can only be due to the writer expecting an astronomically literate audience (Brecht was German).

Font is the same as other 1970s television programs dealing with science:

Inevitably, even Brecht cannot resist overplaying the "stodgy old teachers who are afraid of new truths" angle.  Yet interspersed is faithfulness to the real history:

The Papal Astronomer confirms Galileo's discoveries.

I'm finding that the cliches about stodgy old philosophers beholden to Aristotle are met with at least equal emphasis on Galileo's own character flaws.  He could have stayed safe in Venice and done his science there, but he wanted the financial rewards offered in Florence.  And his personal integrity is not at all consistent. He has no problems sucking up to the Medici.

Galileo

While there are a lot of bad histories of Galileo out there, which love to focus on the (overhyped, in my opinion) run-in with the Catholic Church, I found this one to be excellent. What strikes me is how much it resonates with the things I thought when I first read Siderius Nuncius myself.

By the way, the music in the background is by Galileo's father! Yes, his dad was a composer (and lutist, and luthier).

Here is some more of his father's music:

And here is the Wikipedia page on his father, Vincenzo Galilei