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:

Father Daughter Relationship | Russian Soldier | Nurse | Poetry | Military Desertion

Awards:

Won 5 Oscars. Another 15 wins & 10 nominations

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

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for mature themes.

Runtime:

197 min | Sweden:160 min | Sweden:192 min (2001 re-release) | Sweden:200 min (1998 re-release) | UK:192 min (1999 re-release) | UK:193 min | UK:200 min (1992 re-release)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 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:

West Germany:12 (f) | Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | South Korea:12 | Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Iceland:12 | UK:PG (1992) | USA:Approved (original rating) | USA:GP (re-rating) (1971) | USA:PG-13 (re-rating) (1995) | Canada:PG (video rating) | UK:A (1966) | UK:15 (1987) | Brazil:12 | 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:

Robert Bolt recommended Albert Finney for the role of Pasha, and wrote Finney a long letter to convince him to accept. 'David Lean', however, refused, largely because Finney had turned down the title role in Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

Goofs:

Anachronisms: In the scene where Dr. Zhivago first arrives in Moscow (near the beginning of the movie). He is boarding a tram on Tverskaya street. In the background, is a statue of Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow in 1147. The statue was placed there in 1947 on the 800th anniversary of Moscow's founding. It wasn't there before the Bolshevik revolution, the time during which the scene is supposed to have taken place.

Quotes:

Liberius: Comrade Doctor, I need a medical officer.
Zhivago: I'm sorry, I have a wife and child in Varykino.
Razin, Liberius' Lieutenant: ...and a mistress in Yuriatin.
Liberius: [laughs] Comrade Medical Officer, we are Red partisans, and we SHOOT deserters!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Homicide: Life on the Street: A Case of Do or Die (#7.14)" (1999)

Soundtrack:

Prelude in G minor, Op.23-5

One of the Best Epic Films Ever Made

I can't remember the origin of the quote, but I remember it distinctly. A Communist Party official of the Soviet Union, justifying the Bolshevik destruction of Tsarist Russia, told a foreign observer, `If you want to make an omelet, you've got to break some eggs.' The visitor replied, `I see the broken eggs, but Where's the omelet?' Dr. Zhivago is set at the time when the Bolsheviks, feverishly ideological, were creating their socialist state. The epochal drama that unfolds is the age-old question about whether the ends justify the means.

As materialists (matter precedes spirit, not vice versa), the Bolsheviks believed that they had found the holy grail of human progress in Marxism-Leninism, and were now able to assume the reins of history in their own hands. They believed that their violence was not only justified, but necessary, oblivious to the fact that they, too, somehow felt the angel of medieval teleology smiling over their shoulders.

In contrast to the Bolsheviks, Zhivago's ethos, if he had one, was almost identical to Kant's `categorical imperative,' which had just one axiom: treat people as ends in themselves, and not as ends to a mean. There couldn't be a sharper moral contrast.

There's a fabulous scene midway through the movie that highlights the difference in moral attitude. Dr. Zhivago confronts a communist functionary who has ordered the destruction of a village, a hamlet suspected of aiding the Mensheviks by selling them horses. To the Bolsheviks, if you weren't 100 percent behind them, you were a `counterrevolutionary,' sorta like Dubya's idea that you're either for us, or against us. And so Strelnikov, the passionate Bolshevik, glibly justifies his actions to Dr. Zhivago as easy as if he were tossing his hair aside, saying that the annihilation of the village, however cruel, is necessary to make a point. Zhivago replies: `Your point; their village.'

I love this film, a timeless epic. If there's a more beautiful heroine in all of movie-making history than Julie Christie (Lara), I'm not aware of it. And Omar Sharif is stunning as Iuri Zhivago, who heals the body with emetics, scalpels, antiseptic, and gauze, while he heals the soul with his poetry. Although the movie is three hours and 20 minutes long, the cinematography is so efficient, evocative, and densely layered that one hardly notices. This is, in my opinion, one of the best films of all time.