Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Director:

David Lean

Writers:

Boris Pasternak (novel)
Robert Bolt (screenplay)

Release Date:

22 December 1965 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance | War

Tagline:

The entertainment event of the year!

Plot:

Life of a Russian doctor/poet who, although married, falls for a political activist's wife and experiences hardships during the Bolshevik Revolution.

Plot Keywords:

Russia | Epic | Bolshevik | Russian Revolution | Poetry

Awards:

Won 5 Oscars. Another 15 wins & 10 nominations

US TV Schedule:

Sun. Dec. 20

12:30 PM

TCM

Cast

Omar Sharif	...	Dr. Yuri Zhivago
Julie Christie	...	Lara
Geraldine Chaplin	...	Tonya
Rod Steiger	...	Komarovsky
Alec Guinness	...	Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago
Tom Courtenay	...	Pasha
Siobhan McKenna	...	Anna
Ralph Richardson	...	Alexander
Rita Tushingham	...	The Girl
Jeffrey Rockland	...	Sasha
Tarek Sharif	...	Yuri at 8 years old
Bernard Kay	...	The Bolshevik
Klaus Kinski	...	Kostoyed
Gérard Tichy	...	Liberius (as Gerard Tichy)
Noel Willman	...	Razin

Also Known As:

Doctor Zhivago (Argentina) (Spain) [es]
Doktor Zjivago (Finland: Swedish title) (Sweden) [sv]
Doutor Jivago (Brazil) (Portugal) [pt]
Docteur Jivago (France) [fr]
Doktor Schiwago (West Germany) [de]
Doktor Zhivago (Greece) [el]
Doktor Zivago (Denmark) [da]
Doktor Zsivágó (Hungary) [hu]
Doktor Zywago (Poland) [pl]
Dr. Jivago (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
Il dottor Zivago (Italy) [it]
Tohtori Zivago (Finland) [fi]

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for mature themes.

Runtime:

197 min | UK:192 min (1999 re-release) | UK:193 min | UK:200 min (1992 re-release)

Country:

USA | UK

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (35 mm magnetic prints) | 70 mm 6-Track (Westrex Recording System) (70 mm prints) | DTS (re-release) (35 mm prints) | Mono (35 mm optical prints)

Certification:

Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | Iceland:12 | South Korea:12 | Brazil:Livre | West Germany:12 (f) | USA:Approved (original rating) | USA:GP (re-rating) (1971) | Canada:PG (video rating) | USA:PG-13 (re-rating) (1995) | UK:15 (1987) | UK:A (1966) | UK:PG (1992) | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Chile:14 | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Spain:13 | Sweden:11

Filming Locations:

Alberta, Canada

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

According to Freddie Young, before he reluctantly agreed to take the director of photography job following an exhausting collaboration on Lawrence of Arabia (1962), David Lean had a major falling-out with the previous director of photography, Nicolas Roeg, over creative differences. After Young took over, an additional two weeks of photography was required to re-shoot the scenes that Roeg had shot.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: In an early scene (pre-Revolution), Komarovsky says to Lara, "I want to avoid Kropotkin Street." Before the Revolution, this street was called Prechistenka. Kropotkin was an anarchist, and there would never have been a street named for him in Tsarist Russia.

Quotes:

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: I told myself it was beneath my dignity for arresting a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for a bit of fuel will destroy a city...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Must Love Dogs (2005)

Soundtrack:

Prelude in G minor, Op.23-5

Romance And Revolution

You really do miss something when you see a formatted version of Doctor Zhivago as I recently did. This is the kind of film that was made literally for the big screen. It's what epic movie making is all about.

I also think that you should see this on the big screen back to back with Warren Beatty's Reds. Two very opposite views of the Russian Revolution, one from the inside and one from the outside. You could have a very interesting discussion on which is which.

The title character, played by Omar Sharif, is Dr. Yuri Zhivago who is both doctor and poet. He was orphaned as a child and raised in the house of Ralph Richardson and Siobhan McKenna. He marries their daughter, Geraldine Chaplin who of course he loves, but naturally like a sister.

The real passion of his life is Julie Christie who is married to a committed Bolshevik in Tom Courtenay. Courtenay is also a guy, with shall we say, some issues. She loves him in her own way though and goes to search for him when he volunteers for the army to subvert it as the Bolshevik plan was when Russia entered World War I.

Christie meets Sharif at the front and the passion ignites. But all around them the society they knew and were brought up in is crumbling about them. Their story set against the background of the Russian Revolution is what Doctor Zhivago is all about.

Zhivago knows change was inevitable, the old order in Russia was ready to be toppled. But he's a poet and not one to let his art be subverted for the sake of the state. Fortunately he's also a doctor and his services are needed, in fact the Bolsheviks rather brutally insist on his accompanying one of their brigades as a medical officer.

I still remember as a lad the acclaim Boris Pasternak's novel got world wide when it was published while being banned in his home land. After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pasternak died shortly thereafter. It's a pity he did not live to see this film, I think he would have approved.

From the deserts of Arabia to the steppes of Russia, David Lean certainly knew how to direct a film that involved vastness. Yet the people of his stories be it Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago never get lost in the spectacle. Lean makes you care about the characters that Pasternak created, you get involved in the romance of Sharif and Christie, you want to know if they'll make it in this country undergoing revolutionary convulsions.

Other performances of note are Alec Guinness as Sharif's half brother Yevgeny Zhivago, a committed Bolshevik himself and Rod Steiger as the opportunistic Komorovsky.

Doctor Zhivago won a host of awards in several technical categories, strangely enough it wasn't nominated for Best Picture in 1965 though. It is a classic and even now with the Soviet Union a memory, I doubt if even a Russian made remake of Zhivago could equal what David Lean and his wonderful cast gave us in 1965.