Doctor Zhivago (Russian: До́ктор Жива́го) is a 1965 epic drama-romance-war film directed by David Lean, starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. The film is loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak. It has remained popular for decades, and as of 2012 is the eighth highest grossing film of all time in the United States, adjusted for inflation.^[1]

Plot[link]

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The film takes place mostly during 1912–1923 against a backdrop of World War I, the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, as the regime of Tsar Nicholas II is overthrown and the Soviet Union established. A narrative framing device, set in the late 1940s to early 1950s, involves KGB Lieutenant General Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago (Alec Guinness) searching for the illegitimate child of his half brother, doctor Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago (Omar Sharif), and his mistress Larissa ("Lara") Antipova (Julie Christie). Yevgraf believes a young woman working on a dam project, Tonya Komarovskaya (Rita Tushingham) may be his niece, and tells her the story of her father's life.

When he is a child, Yuri Zhivago loses his father, who abandons the family, and his mother, who dies. Left destitute, he is taken in by his mother's friends, Alexander 'Sasha' (Ralph Richardson) and Anna (Siobhán McKenna) Gromeko — and their daughter Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). Retired medical professor Gromeko helps Zhivago enter a Moscow medical school in 1913, as Yuri does not think he can support a family, as a rising poet. 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 arrives and reveals his scarred face to Lara and asks her to hide a Smith & Wesson revolver he picked up at the demonstration.

Lara becomes more 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 sees Lara for the first time. When Pasha, (now a dedicated Bolshevik), informs Komarovsky of his intentions to marry Lara, Komarovsky tries to dissuade Lara from marrying Pasha, and then rapes her. In revenge, Lara takes the pistol she has been concealing for Pasha, tracks Komarovsky to a Christmas Eve party and shoots him, wounding him 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, treating Komarovsky's wound at the party, sees Pasha. Although enraged and devastated by Lara's infidelity, Pasha cannot bring himself to strike her. 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 was a Russian Social Democratic Labour Party member during this time, 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 daughter, Pasha Antipov joins a volunteer regiment. In the winter of 1915, Pasha is presumed dead during an attack on the Germans but officially declared missing in action. Lara enlists as a nurse in order to search for him. Meanwhile, the February Revolution breaks. Zhivago enlists Lara's help to tend to the wounded. The two run 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. 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 recognizes the Commissar as Pasha Antipov, now an anti-Revisionist Red Army Commissar, whom he met at the Christmas eve party back in 1913. After a tense interview, 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.

The family lives a peaceful life at Varykino until the next spring, when Zhivago goes into nearby Yuriatin and finds that Lara is still living there with Katya, working as a librarian. The two reacquaint and surrender to their long repressed feelings, beginning an extra-marital affair. Zhivago, deeply ashamed 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, trudging through the snow to Yuriatin. He makes his way to Lara's flat, where the two lovers rekindle their relationship. Lara reveals a letter from Tonya, in which 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."

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, frozen inside. Yuri begins writing the "Lara" poems, which will later make him famous but incur governmental 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 Soviet puppet government of the Far East. 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, gets him a hospital job and buys him some new clothes. While traveling on a tram to his first day at work, Yuri sees a woman whom he recognizes as Lara. Forcing his way off the tram, he runs after her, suffering a fatal heart attack. She doesn't see or notice him. Yuri's funeral is well attended as his poetry is already being published openly due to shifts in politics. 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 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, in which Zhivago's mother dies. Yuri inherits her balalaika. His adoptive father says that his mother had a gift. The artistic talent theme 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 a young girl Tanya Komarovskaya is Yuri and Lara's daughter. She is reluctant to believe it. The girl ends the meeting, promising that she will "think about it", leaving 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, "Tanya, 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[link]

• Omar Sharif as Dr. Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago
• Julie Christie as Lara Antipova
• Geraldine Chaplin as Tonya Gromeko
• Rod Steiger as Victor Komarovsky
• Alec Guinness as General Yevgraf Zhivago
• Tom Courtenay as Pasha Antipov/"Strelnikov"
• Siobhán McKenna as Anna Gromeko
• Ralph Richardson as Alexander "Sasha" Gromeko
• Rita Tushingham as Tanya Komarovskaya/"The Girl"
• Klaus Kinski as Kostoyed Amoursky
• Gerard Tichy as Liberius
• Noel Willman as Commissar Razin
• Geoffrey Keen as Professor Boris Kurt
• Bernard Kay as Kuril, the Bolshevik
• Jack MacGowran as Petya, the Groundskeeper
• Gwen Nelson as the female janitor

Production[link]

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 initial and 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. Some of the winter sequences were filmed in Spain, 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. All the trains used in the film were Spanish trains like RENFE 240 ex 1400 MZA and Strelnikov's armoured train towed by the Renfe 2-8-2 class Mikado. 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 25 °C (86 °F).Other locations include the Estación de Madrid-Delicias in Madrid and El Moncayo.

Reception[link]

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. Lean made Ryan's Daughter in 1970, filmed a made-for-TV short a few years later, then waited until 1984 to make his final film, A Passage to India .^[5]

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.^[6]

American Film Institute recognition[link]

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies - #39
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions - #7
• AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores - Nominated^[7]
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - Nominated^[8]
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Epic Film^[9]

Awards[link]

The film won five Academy Awards and was nominated for five more:^[10][11]

Won

• Best Art Direction (John Box, Terence Marsh, Dario Simoni)
• Best Cinematography (Freddie Young)
• Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Bolt)
• Best Costume Design
• Best Original Score

Nominated

• Best Picture
• Best Supporting Actor (Tom Courtenay)
• Best Director (David Lean)
• Best Editing
• Best Sound (A. W. Watkins, Franklin Milton)

Home video[link]