Doctor Zhivago (film)

Doctor Zhivago (film)
Doctor Zhivago

Theatrical release poster by Tom Jung
Directed by David Lean
Produced by Carlo Ponti
Screenplay by Robert Bolt
Based on Doctor Zhivago by
Boris Pasternak
Starring Omar Sharif
Julie Christie
Geraldine Chaplin
Rod Steiger
Alec Guinness
Tom Courtenay
Music by Maurice Jarre
Cinematography Freddie Young
Nicholas Roeg (Uncredited)
Editing by Norman Savage
Studio Sostar S.A.
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s) December 22, 1965 (1965-12-22) (US)
April 26, 1966 (1966-04-26) (UK)
December 10, 1966 (1966-12-10) (Italy)
September 28, 1999 (1999-09-28) (US re-release)
Running time 197 minutes
193 minutes (UK)
200 minutes (1992 re-release)
192 minutes (1999 re-release)
Language English
Russian
Budget $11 million
Box office $111,721,910[1]

Doctor Zhivago (Russian: До́ктор Жива́го) is a 1965 epic drama-romance-war film directed by David Lean and loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak. It has remained popular for decades, and as of 2010 is the eighth highest grossing film of all time in the United States, adjusted for inflation.[1]

Contents

Plot

The film takes place, for the most part, during the tumultuous period of 1912–1923, the years which included World War I, the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, as the regime of Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and the Soviet Union established. A framing device, from which the film is narrated, takes place some time in the late 1940s to early 1950s, though a specific date is never mentioned.

The film's framing device involves KGB Lieutenant General Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago (Alec Guinness) searching for the illegitimate child of his half brother, poet and doctor Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago (Omar Sharif), and his mistress Larissa ("Lara") Antipova (Julie Christie). Yevgraf believes a young woman named Tonya Komarovskaya (Rita Tushingham) working on a dam project may be his niece.

Yevgraf tells Tonya the story of her father's life. Yuri Zhivago's father abandons the family and Yuri's mother dies when he is a child. Left destitute, Yuri is taken in by his mother's friends, Alexander 'Sasha' (Ralph Richardson) and Anna (Siobhán McKenna) Gromeko — and their daughter Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). As Gromeko is a retired medical professor living in Moscow, Zhivago is able to enter medical school in 1913, studying under Professor Boris Kurt (Geoffrey Keen). Though he is already a poet of some renown, Yuri does not think he can support a family as a poet and decides to become a doctor. Lara, meanwhile, lives with her mother (Adrienne Corri), a dressmaker who is being "advised" by Victor Ipolitovich Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), a corrupt attorney, who was a friend and business partner of Zhivago's father. Lara becomes engaged to Pavel Pavlovich ("Pasha") Antipov (Tom Courtenay). Originally an idealistic social democrat, Pasha drifts into Left-wing extremism after being wounded and scarred by sabre-wielding Cossacks during a peaceful protest. The same evening, Komarovsky takes Lara to an expensive restaurant and seduces her. After Lara returns home, Pasha shows up at Lara's home, revealing his scarred face to Lara and tells her to hide a Smith & Wesson revolver that he picked up at the demonstration, telling her to hide it and shoot any capitalists in revenge for the massacre of the demonstrators.

Lara becomes more deeply involved with Komarovsky, until her mother finally discovers their affair and tries to commit suicide by swallowing iodine. Komarovsky discovers her and summons help from Kurt and his assistant Zhivago, who thus sees Lara for the first time. When Pasha, now a dedicated Bolshevik, informs Komarovsky of his intentions to marry Lara, Komarovsky is not amused. He tries to dissuade Lara from marrying Pasha, and then rapes her. In revenge, Lara takes a pistol she has been concealing for Pasha, tracks Komarovsky to a Christmas Eve party and shoots him. Komarovsky is not killed but only shot in the arm. Although the diners wish to notify the police, Komarovsky insists that no action be taken against Lara, who is escorted out by Pasha. Yuri, who is also present at the party, sees Pasha. Although enraged and devastated by Lara's infidelity, Pasha cannot bring himself to strike her. Komarovsky's wound is treated by Yuri. In the aftermath, Pasha marries Lara and they have a daughter, Katya Antipova.

The movie then moves ahead to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Yevgraf Zhivago reveals that he is a Russian Social Democratic Labour Party member when narrating, intending to subvert the Imperial Russian Army for Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks. Yuri is married to Tonya Gromeko and becomes a battlefield doctor along the Eastern Front. Leaving his wife and his daughter, Pasha Antipov joins a volunteer regiment ("Happy men don't volunteer," Yevgraf is heard to say in voice-over) and became a trusted man to his comrades. In the winter of 1915, Pasha is presumed dead during an attack on the Germans but technically declared missing in action. Lara enlists as a nurse in order to search for him. Meanwhile, the February Revolution breaks out and the soldiers begin to kill their officers and desert en masse. Travelling with a group of deserters, Lara again encounters Zhivago, who is with a column of replacement troops marching to the front. Zhivago enlists the help of Lara to tend to the wounded. The two manage a makeshift hospital in a nearby dacha for the remainder of the war and are parted after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

After the war, Yuri returns to Moscow, learns that his mother-in-law has died and that the Gromekos' house has been divided into tenements by the new Soviet government. Yuri meets his son Sasha for the first time since the boy was an infant, and resumes his old job at the local hospital. Angered that his family lacks firewood for the family stove, one night Yuri steals wood from a fence, where he is spotted by his half-brother, Yevgraf, who is working for the CHEKA. Yevgraf follows him home, identifies himself, and informs Zhivago that his poems have been condemned by Soviet censors as antagonistic to Communism. After explaining that this puts their whole family at risk for collective punishment, Yevgraf helps arrange for rail passes for their transport to the Gromeko estate at Varykino, in the Ural Mountains.

Zhivago, Tonya, Sasha and Alexander board a heavily-guarded cattle train which contains a detachment of labour conscripts bound for the gulag—including the hot-headed dissident anarchist intellectual, Kostoyed Amoursky (Klaus Kinski)—and a large contingent of Red Guards. At one point, the train passes through the village of Mink, which has been shelled by Red forces commanded by People's Commissar Strelnikov, with one old woman from the village taken onto the train with a dead infant. As the train stopped somewhere near the Urals, an armoured train adorned with red flags passes by as the Bolshevik sailors and the old woman saying that the armoured train is Strelnikov's, with Strelnikov standing at the back of the armoured train. In a closeup on his face, it reveals that Strelnikov is actually Pasha. While the Urals train is stopped in the Urals, Zhivago wanders away from the train, listens to the sound of a waterfall, and stumbles across Strelnikov's armoured train sitting on a hidden siding. Believing that Yuri is about to assassinate the Commissar, the Red Guards arrest him and bring him before Strelnikov. Yuri immediately recognises the Commissar as Pasha Antipov, now an anti-Revisionist, whom he recognized at the Christmas eve party back in 1913. After a tense conversation, Strelnikov informs Yuri that Lara is alive in the town of Yuriatin — which is then occupied by the anti-Communist White Army. He then allows Zhivago to return to his family, although it is implied by a guard that most people interrogated by Strelnikov end up being shot.

Zhivago's family arrives at Varykino, only to learn that their house has been boarded up with a sign indicating confiscation by the Soviet State, a.k.a. "the people". Out of fear of being executed as "counter-revolutionaries", they refrain from breaking into their own house and decide to occupy the smaller guest cottage. The family lives a mundane life until the next spring, when Zhivago goes into nearby Yuriatin and finds that Lara is still living there with Katya, and working as a librarian. The two reacquaint themselves and surrender to their longtime feelings, beginning an extra-marital affair. Zhivago feels deeply ashamed and is torn between Tonya and Lara, until Tonya becomes pregnant. Yuri travels to Yuriatin and breaks off his relationship with Lara, only to be abducted and conscripted into service by Communist partisans under Liberius (Gérard Tichy) while riding back to Varykino. After serving with the Partisans for nearly two years, Zhivago deserts, walking through the snow to Yuriatin in an attempt to reach Varykino, but learns that Tonya, her father and Sasha are gone. He makes his way to Lara's flat, where the two lovers rekindle their relationship. Lara reveals a letter from Tonya, where she tells Yuri that she, her father, and Sasha have emigrated to Paris. She has also given birth to a daughter, and admits at the end, "I must honestly admit that {Lara} Antipova is a good person."

However, Komarovsky arrives one night and informs them that they are being watched by the CHEKA, due to Lara's marriage to Commissar Strelnikov (who has fallen from favour with the Soviet State) and Yuri's "counter-revolutionary" poetry and desertion. Komarovsky offers Yuri and Lara his help in leaving Russia, but they refuse. Instead, they go to the Varykino estate, which has been left open and is frozen inside. Yuri begins writing the "Lara" poems, which later make him famous but incur government displeasure. Komarovsky reappears and tells Yuri that Strelnikov was arrested and committed suicide while being taken to his execution. Therefore, Lara is in immediate danger, as the CHEKA had only left her free to lure Strelnikov into the open. Zhivago scoffs at this, but Komarovsky informs him that Strelnikov had been arrested on the road only five miles from Varykino. Yuri agrees to send Lara away with Komarovsky, who has been appointed as Minister of Justice to the White government of Mongolia. Refusing to leave with a man he despises, Yuri remains behind.

Years later during the Stalinist era, Yuri returns destitute to Moscow, where Yevgraf, now an NKVD Polkovnik, obtains for him a hospital job and buys him some new clothes. While travelling on a tram to his first day at work, Yuri sees a woman whom he recognises as Lara. Forcing his way off the tram, he runs after her, but suffers a fatal heart attack before she can see or notice him. Yuri's funeral is well-attended as his poetry is already being published openly due to shifts in politics and his funeral is well-attended. Among the mourners is Lara, who approaches Yevgraf and informs him that she has given birth to Yuri's daughter, but has become separated from her in the collapse of the White Government in Mongolia. After vainly looking over hundreds of orphans with Yevgraf's help, Lara disappears off the street during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. "She died or vanished somewhere, in one of the labour camps," recalls Yevgraf, "A nameless number, on a list that was afterwards mislaid."

When Yevgraf starts retelling Yuri's story, Zhivago's mother dies and he inherits her balalaika. His adoptive father informs him that his mother had a gift. The theme of artistic talent is repeated throughout the film, as Zhivago becomes a poet of great renown. At the end, set at a hydroelectric dam during the early 1950s, Yevgraf is growing more and more convinced the young girl Tonya Komarovskaya is Yuri's and Lara's daughter, but she is reluctant to believe it. The girl ends the meeting, promising that she will "think about it", and leaves with her boyfriend, a dam operator. While walking away, the girl slings a balalaika over her shoulder, which catches the eye of Yevgraf. He calls out to her, "Tonya, can you play the balalaika?" Her boyfriend responds, "Can she play? She is an artist!" "Who taught you?" Yevgraf asks. "No one taught her." Yevgraf smiles and comments, "Ah, then, it's a gift."

Cast

Production

This famous film version by David Lean was created for various reasons. Pasternak's novel had been an international success, and producer Carlo Ponti was interested in adapting it as a vehicle for his wife, Sophia Loren. Lean, coming off the huge success of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), wanted to make a more intimate, romantic film to balance the action- and adventure-oriented tone of his previous film. One of the first actors signed onboard was Omar Sharif, who had played Lawrence's right-hand man Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia. Sharif loved the novel, and when he heard Lean was making a film adaptation, he requested to be cast in the role of Pasha (which ultimately went to Tom Courtenay). Sharif was quite surprised when Lean suggested that he play Zhivago himself. Peter O'Toole, star of Lawrence of Arabia, was Lean's original choice for Zhivago, but turned the part down; Max von Sydow and Paul Newman were also considered. Michael Caine tells in his autobiography that he also read for Zhivago, but (after watching the results with David Lean) was the one who suggested Omar Sharif.[2] Rod Steiger was cast as Komarovsky after Marlon Brando and James Mason turned the part down. Audrey Hepburn was considered for Tonya, while Robert Bolt lobbied for Albert Finney to play Pasha. Lean, however, was able to convince Ponti that Loren was not right for the role of Lara, saying she was "too tall" (and confiding in screenwriter Robert Bolt that he could not accept Loren as a virgin for the early parts of the film), and Yvette Mimieux, Sarah Miles and Jane Fonda were considered for the role. Ultimately, Julie Christie was cast based on her appearance in Billy Liar (1963), and the recommendation of John Ford, who directed her in Young Cassidy.

The final scenes were shot at the Aldeadávila Dam between Spain and Portugal.

Since the book was banned in the Soviet Union, the movie was filmed largely in Spain over ten months,[3] with the entire Moscow set being built from scratch outside of Madrid. Most of the scenes covering Zhivago and Lara's service in World War I were filmed in Soria, as was the Varykino estate. Due to uncooperative weather in Spain, some of the winter sequences were filmed in Finland, mostly landscape scenes, and Yuri's escape from the Partisans. Winter scenes of the family travelling to Yuriatin by rail were filmed in Canada.

The "ice-palace" at Varykino was filmed in Soria as well, a house filled with frozen beeswax. The charge of the Partisans across the frozen lake was filmed in Spain, too; a cast iron sheet was placed over a dried river-bed, and fake snow (mostly marble dust) was added on top. Some of the winter scenes, were filmed in summer with warm temperatures, sometimes of up to 30 °C (86 °F).

Reception

The film was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.[4]

Despite being a huge box office hit, Doctor Zhivago received mixed reviews at the time of its release. It was criticised for its length and depiction of the romance between Zhivago and Lara. The preview cut, which ran to over 220 minutes, was criticized for its length and poor pacing; Lean felt obliged to remove up to 17 minutes of footage before the film's wide release, and the missing footage has not been restored or located. Lean took these criticisms very personally, and claimed at the time that he would never make another film. However, numerous critics — including Richard Schickel and Anna Lee — defended Doctor Zhivago, and its box office success allowed Lean to write off his critics. Lean made Ryan's Daughter in 1970, then waited until 1984 to make his final film, A Passage to India (1984).[citation needed]

The film left an indelible mark on popular culture and fashion, and to this day remains an extremely popular film: Maurice Jarre's score—particularly "Lara's Theme"—became one of the most famous in cinematic history. Over the years, the film's critical reputation has gained in stature, and today Doctor Zhivago is considered to be one of Lean's finest works and is highly critically acclaimed, along with Lawrence of Arabia, Brief Encounter, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and A Passage to India.

As with the novel itself, the film was banned in the Soviet Union. It was not shown in Russia until 1994.

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 85% 'Fresh' rating.[5]

American Film Institute recognition

Awards

The film won five Academy Awards and was nominated for five more:[6][7]

Won
Nominated

Home video

On May 4, 2010, the 45th Anniversary version of Doctor Zhivago was released on DVD (two disc set) and on Blu-ray (a three-disc set that includes a book).[8] The two-disc set consists of a double-sided DVD for the main film (whereas the DVD has to be flipped for part 2 of the film), and a one-sided DVD for the extras.

The region 2 version of this release suffers partly from Newton's rings, an artifact probably due to chemical damage to the film base used for telecine, particularly in part 2 of the film.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Doctor Zhivago". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=doctorzhivago.htm. Retrieved 2010-01-20.  Adjusted for inflation as of January 2010, this is $912 million, the 8th highest lifetime domestic gross of any film.
  2. ^ Michael Caine: The Elephant to Hollywood
  3. ^ Geraldine Chaplin appearance on the What's My Line?, episode 814. Originally aired January 2, 1966 on CBS. Viewed on September 10, 2007.
  4. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Doctor Zhivago". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2823/year/1966.html. Retrieved 2009-03-07. 
  5. ^ Doctor Zhivago at Rotten Tomatoes
  6. ^ "The 38th Academy Awards (1966) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/legacy/ceremony/38th-winners.html. Retrieved 2011-08-24. 
  7. ^ "NY Times: Doctor Zhivago". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/14162/Doctor-Zhivago/awards. Retrieved 2008-12-26. 
  8. ^ "DVD & Blu-ray cover art release calendar- May 2010". dvdtown.com. http://www.dvdtown.com/moviedatabase/releasecalendar-dvd-bluray/May/2010/0/1. Retrieved May 17, 2010. 

External links


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