Doctor Zhivago (film)

Doctor Zhivago (Russian: Доктор Живаго, academically transliterated as Doktor Živago) is an Italian-British-American historical romance film. from 1965 directed by David Lean with a screenplay by Robert Bolt, set in Russia during World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. It stars Omar Sharif in the title role as Yuri Zhivago, a married poet and doctor whose life is upended by the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, and Julie Christie as her love interest Lara Antipova. Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Siobhán McKenna and Rita Tushingham play supporting roles.

This is an epic drama, based on the homonymous novel published by the Russian Boris Pasternak in 1957 and which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature a year later. Although immensely popular in the Western world, the book was banned in the Soviet Union for decades. For this reason, the film could not be made in the Soviet Union and was shot mainly in Spain instead. It was an international co-production between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Italian producer Carlo Ponti. Adjusted the figure of more than 111 million dollars for the inflation index as of January 2010, it is equivalent to 912 million dollars, which places the film in the eighth place of collection of all time.

Contemporary critics were generally disappointed, complaining about its length of more than three hours and stating that it trivialized the story, but acknowledging the intensity of the love story and the film's treatment of human themes. Over time, however, the film's reputation has greatly improved. At the 38th Academy Awards, the film won five Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. And it was nominated for five others (including best picture and best director), but lost four of those five to The Sound of Music. In addition, it was awarded five Golden Globe Awards including Best Dramatic Film and Best Dramatic Actor for Sharif.

As of 2016, it is the eighth highest-grossing film of all time in the United States and Canada, adjusted for ticket price inflation. Additionally, it is also one of the top ten highest-grossing films in the world, once adjusted to inflation. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 39th on its 100 Years...100 Films list, and by the British Film Institute the following year as the 27th greatest British film of all time.

Synopsis

The screenwriter resorted to the technique of analepsis or flashback to structure the plot of the film. Soviet general Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago (Alec Guinness) tells the story of his half-brother, the doctor and poet Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif), to the young Tonya Komaróvskaya (Rita Tushingham), who bears the name Tatiana Bezócheredeva in the original novel. Yevgraf Zhivago believes that Yuri is actually the girl's father. Yevgraf Zhivago's narrative has as its historical setting the tumultuous period of 1902-1929, which included World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Russian Civil War, when Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family were assassinated and the Union was established. Soviet Union in 1922. From the age of young Tonya Komaróvskaya, it is deduced that the narrative takes place in the late 1940s or 1950s, despite the fact that a specific date is never mentioned.

Plot

Yevgraf Andréyevich Zhivago (Alec Guinness) shows young Tonya Komaróvskaya (Rita Tushingham) an image of Laraprinted in a copy of Yuri Zhivago's poems.

The plot of the film is framed in the search carried out by KGB lieutenant general Yevgraf Andréyevich Zhivago (Alec Guinness) for the illegitimate daughter of his half brother, the poet and doctor Yuri Andréyevich Zhivago (Omar Sharif), and of his lover Larisa ("Lara") Antipova (Julie Christie). Yevgraf believes that a young woman named Tonya Komarovskaya (Rita Tushingham), who works at a Soviet hydroelectric dam, may be his niece. (The KGB detail, absent from the original novel, is the screenwriter's own creation.)

Childhood and youth of Yuri Zhivago

Julie Christie representing the teenage Lara in the first part of the film.

Yevgraf refers the life story of Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago to Tonya Komarovskaya. Yuri Zhivago loses his parents at a very young age: his father abandons his family and Yuri's mother dies when he is a child. In need, Yuri is taken in by some friends of his mother, the marriage formed by Alexander (Ralph Richardson) and Anna (Siobhán McKenna) Gromeko, who have a daughter named Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). Gromeko is a retired medical professor living in Moscow and the talented Yuri Zhivago is able to enter the Medical School in 1913, where he becomes an assistant to Professor Boris Kurt (Geoffrey Keen). Although Yuri is already a poet of some renown, he doesn't believe that he can support a family as a poet and decides to become a general practitioner.

In parallel, Larisa (Lara) Antipova (Julie Christie) is a young student who lives with her mother (Adrienne Corri), owner of a sewing workshop, at the time advised by Víctor Ipolitovich Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), a corrupt lawyer with various political ties, who was once a business partner of Yuri Zhivago's father. Lara finds herself engaged to Pável Pávlovich (Pasha) Antipov (Tom Courtenay), who in his beginnings is an idealistic young man, an enthusiastic social democrat.

Scene the Cossacks attack a peaceful demonstration. The film's argument is characterized by happening in the frame of large scenarios.

Julie Christie, in her role as Lara. The photograph is part of a scene where it appears as a lover of Komarovsky.

One night, the Cossacks repress the peaceful demonstration of a crowd demanding bread, work and equality, causing a massacre that includes women and children among the victims. Yuri himself witnesses the massacre. During it, Pasha is marked on his face by a saber blow. That episode shifts Pasha's ideology towards left-wing extremism. That same night, Víctor Komarovsky, who was already a lover of Lara's mother, takes the young woman to an expensive and refined restaurant to finally seduce her. As Lara returns to her house, Pasha introduces himself and reveals her wounded face, asking her to hide a Smith & Wesson that he picked up at the rally.

Komarovsky makes teenager Lara his lover, until her mother discovers the relationship and tries to commit suicide by ingesting iodine. Komarovsky, to get out of the predicament, asks doctor Kurt for help, who comes accompanied by his assistant Yuri Zhivago. It is then that Yuri sees Lara for the first time. When Pasha, now a determined Bolshevik, informs Komarovsky of his intentions to marry Lara, Komarovsky is unenthusiastic and tries to dissuade Lara from marrying Pasha. As a manifestation of her character, Komarovsky ends up raping her. Lara, broken inside, decides to leave Pasha. However, in revenge, Lara takes Pasha's gun that she was hiding, looks for Komarovsky at the Christmas Eve party and shoots him. Komarovsky is not killed, but only wounded in the arm. Despite the diners wanting to call the police, Komarovsky insists that no action be taken against Lara, who is escorted by Pasha. Komarovsky's wound is dressed and bandaged by Yuri, who also witnessed what happened at the party where he met Pasha. Although furious about what happened, Pasha can't bring himself to hit Lara. Later, Pasha marries Lara and they have a daughter, Katia Antipova.

World War I

The plot of the film itself begins after the outbreak of World War I on July 28, 1914. Yevgraf Zhivago reveals that he was a member of the Workers' Party during this time, which was acting with the intention of subverting the Imperial Russian Army in favor of the Bolsheviks of Vladimir Lenin. Yuri, for his part, is already married to Tonya Gromeko (Geraldine Chaplin), a young woman from the gentry who has been in love with him since childhood. Yuri becomes a battlefield medic along the Eastern Front. Leaving his wife and daughter behind, Pavel (Pasha) Antipov joins a regiment of volunteers (in the film, Yevgraf's voice is heard saying: 'happy men don't volunteer') and he becomes a trusted man for his peers. In the winter of 1915, Antipov is presumed dead during an attack against the Germans, although he is officially declared "missing in action". Lara enlists as a nurse in order to search for him. Meanwhile, the February Revolution of 1917 breaks out: soldiers begin to mutiny against their officers and desert en masse. Traveling with a group of wounded, Zhivago encounters Lara once more, who is with a column of replacement troops marching to the front. Lara helps Zhivago tend to the wounded. The two work together for the remainder of the war, in a makeshift hospital in a nearby country house. They separate after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Return to Moscow and civil war

Omar Sharif as Yuri and Geraldine Chaplin as his wife Tonya who awaits a baby at his home in Varýkino.

After the war, Yuri returns to Moscow. He learns that the Gromeko family home has been subdivided into apartment blocks by the new Soviet government. Yuri meets his son Sasha for the first time since the boy was a baby and resumes his old job at the local hospital. Angry because his family lacks wood for the stove in the middle of the Russian winter, one night Yuri steals wood from a fence, when he is discovered by his half-brother Yevgraf, a police officer working for the Czech . Yevgraf follows him to the house, identifies himself, and informs Yuri Zhivago that his poems "don't like them," suggesting that they have been condemned by Soviet censors as antagonistic to the new regime. Actually, this is not true but Yuri believes it. After suggesting that his family is at collective risk, Yevgraf issues the necessary paperwork for his transfer to the Gromeko estate in Varýkino, in the Ural Mountains.

Zhivago, Tonya, Sasha, and Alexander Gromeko board a heavily guarded, overcrowded freight train that is also carrying a detachment of labor recruits, including a dissident anarchist and hot-headed intellectual, Kostoyed Amursky (Klaus Kinski), and a contingent of red guards. After passing through the town of Mink, shelled by the Red forces under the command of the people's commissar Strelnikov, the train stops somewhere near the Ural Mountains to make way for another armored train carrying Strelnikov himself, a tough and seemingly insensitive. A close-up of her face reveals that Strelnikov is actually Pavel Antipov, Lara's husband, who estranged from her and changed her name to dedicate her life to the cause of the revolution. As the train makes a stop in the Ural region, Yuri Zhivago jumps out for a ride, carried away by the sound of a waterfall and entranced by the light streaming through the forest foliage. Suddenly, he stumbles upon the armored train leading to Strelnikov, stopped and hidden in a siding. Convinced that Yuri might be involved in an assassination plot, the Red Guards arrest him and bring him to Strelnikov. Yuri immediately recognizes the commissar as Pavel Antipov, now in the Red Army facing the White Army in the Russian Civil War, whom he saw at a Christmas Eve party in 1913. After a tense counterpoint between the two, Strelnikov reports - to Yuri's surprise, Lara is not far away but rather lives in the city of Yuriatin, intrinsically manifesting his desire to remain distanced from family life: "Private life has died in Russia...", proclaims Strelnikov, a phrase whose background would be widely analyzed and discussed by ideologues and writers. Strelnikov then allows Zhivago to return to the train with his family.

After the long and difficult journey, the family discovers that the mansion has been confiscated by the revolutionary government and they must take refuge in a small cabin nearby. There, Yuri Zhivago resumes writing poetry and visits the nearby library where he meets Lara Antipova again. The two maintain a loving relationship while Yuri finds out that his wife is pregnant. This leads him to try to break his relationship with Lara, with whom he is in love. While trying to return Zhivago to his home in Varýkino he is forcibly conscripted into a revolutionary platoon of the Red Army for two years.

Yuri and Lara: anguish and poetry

Julie Christie, personifying Lara in a scene he shares with Omar Sharif, who incarnates Yuri Zhivago.

When Yuri finally returns home, she discovers that her family has disappeared after emigrating to France. Saddened, Yuri goes to the house of Lara and her daughter Katia. Faced with continuing danger, the three move to Varýkino, seeking to live together what they consider to be the final time before being separated. The film suggests that it is a period full of anguish and uncertainty, concomitant with the fullest stage of Yuri's poetry. Finally, it is Komarovsky (become, with a certain irony of fate, Minister of Justice of the government of the recently created Republic of the Far East), who announces to Yuri the supposed death of Pavel Antipov. Caught by his political enemies trying to get back to Lara, Pasha refused to answer to Strelnikov's name, acknowledging his true identity. Komarovsky convinces Yuri that Lara is seriously compromised after the death of her husband. Komarovsky offers them to flee with him to the eastern border, "on his own terms." Yuri agrees to save the life of Lara and her daughter Katia, but refuses to accompany them in such a condition. In Lara's own words, Yuri would never leave Russia. Thus, he does not get to find out that Lara carries a daughter of his in her womb.

Yuri later returns to Moscow, where his stepbrother Yevgraf gets him a position at the hospital. One day, Yuri, while riding a tram, sees through the window a woman who looks very similar to Lara's walking down the street. Believing that it is about her, he despairs and gets off the tram in her desire to catch up with her. Affected by the intensity of such emotion, he dies of a heart attack.

The funeral of Yuri Zhivago, very crowded due to the love of poetry that the Russian people have, becomes a meeting place for his half-brother Yevgraf and Lara. She is looking for her daughter, the fruit of her love with Yuri and at the time lost on the eastern border. The help that Yevgraf gives him in the inquiries fails to make the search more fruitful, and both end up separating without hearing from each other again. Lara disappears during Stalin's Great Purge in the mid-1930s "dead or missing somewhere...or in labor camps".

Corollary

The film ends with a return to the opening sequence, in which Tonya Komaróvskaya says she doesn't remember her childhood. She assumes that her father abandoned her during a bombing raid, letting go of her hand. Yevgraf maintains that the one who did this was not her father, but Komarovsky, and that her real father is Yuri Zhivago. However, Yevgraf does not intend to force the young woman to such recognition, but rather to give her time.

In the final scene, the girl walks away with her boyfriend, the operator responsible for the hydroelectric dam. Yevgraf notices that she is carrying a balalaika on her shoulder and asks if he knows how to play it. The boyfriend replies that she is virtuous and that she had taught herself. Yevgraf comments with some admiration: "Then it is a gift!" The scene is loaded with symbolism, since Yuri's mother, Maria Nikolaevna, also played the instrument with mastery and it was said that she had the gift. The balalaika is a string instrument of Russian origin similar to the guitar, but with only three strings and with a triangular box, which is used in the film's soundtrack.

Cast

Production

Background

The original novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak was published in the West amid celebration and controversy. Parts of Pasternak's book had been known in Samizdat since some time after World War II. However, the novel was not completed until 1956. The book had to be smuggled out of the Soviet Union by Moscow Radio correspondent Sergio d'Angelo to whom Pasternak had entrusted the book to be delivered to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a left-wing Italian publisher who published it soon after. Aided by a Soviet campaign against the novel, it became a sensation throughout the non-communist world. It spent 26 weeks at the top of The New York Times Best Seller list.

As a great lyrical poet, Pasternak was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. While the citation highlighted his poetic work, the prize was understood to go primarily to Doctor Zhivago, which the Soviet government regarded as an anti-Soviet work, thus interpreting the awarding of the Nobel Prize as a hostile gesture towards the sovietic Union. The target of the fervent campaign by the Soviet government to brand him a traitor, Pasternak felt compelled to refuse the Prize. The situation became a "cause célèbre" international and made Pasternak a victim of Soviet communist censorship during the Cold War.

Development and casting

David Lean's treatment of the film was proposed for several 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, after the great success of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), wanted to make a more intimate and romantic film to balance the action-adventure tone of his previous film. One of the first actors called on board 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 that Lean was being made into a film adaptation, he asked 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 he declined the role; Max von Sydow and Paul Newman were also considered. Michael Caine recounts in his autobiography that he also auditioned for Zhivago and participated in screen tests with Christie, but (after seeing the results with David Lean) was the one who suggested Omar Sharif. Rod Steiger auditioned as Komarovsky after Marlon Brando and James Mason will decline the role. Audrey Hepburn was considered for Tonya, while Robert Bolt lobbied for Albert Finney to play Pasha.

Lean was able to convince Ponti that Loren was not the best choice for the role of Lara, saying that she was "too tall" (and trusting screenwriter Robert Bolt that he couldn't accept Loren as a virgin for the early parts of the film) Yvette Mimieux, Sarah Miles and Jane Fonda were considered for the role. Ultimately, Julie Christie cast her based on her appearance in Billy Liar (1963), and the recommendation of John Ford, who directed her in Young Cassidy (1965). Sharif's son; Tarek was cast as a young Zhivago in the film and Sharif directed his son as a way of getting closer to his character Various Spanish actors, or foreign regulars in Spanish cinema, played very secondary roles; among them José Nieto (principal priest of the burial of Zhivago's mother), Julián Mateos (second priest), José María Caffarel (in charge of the train car), Lilí Murati (woman with baby in her arms who delivers it to train passengers), and Gerard Tichy (captain of the guerrillas who kidnap Zhivago).

Filming and locations

The final scenes of the film were shot in the dam of Aldeadávila, in the province of Salamanca.

Because the novel was banned in the Soviet Union, the film could not be made there. Lean's experience shooting a part of Lawrence of Arabia in Spain, access to CEA studios and the guarantee of snow in some parts of Spain led him to choose this country as the main location for filming. It was shot more specifically in Madrid, Soria and Salamanca, with the Metrocolor color filming system, characteristic of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. However, the weather forecasts failed and David Lean's team was met with the warmest winter in Spain in fifty years. As a result, some scenes were shot indoors with artificial snow. The crew filmed some locations with heavy snow, such as the snowy landscape in Strelnikov's train sequence, somewhere in Campo de Gómara, near Soria. Filming lasted ten months, with the entire Moscow set built from scratch. out of Madrid. Most of the scenes showing Zhivago and Lara in World War I were shot in Soria, as was the Varýkino farm. The "ice palace" in Varýkino was also shot in Soria, a house full of frozen beeswax. The Supporters' Charge Across the Frozen Lake was also shot in Spain; a cast iron plank was placed on a dry riverbed and fake snow (mainly marble dust) was added. Some of the winter scenes were shot in summer with warm temperatures, sometimes up to 25 °C (77 °F). Other places include the Madrid-Delicias Railway Museum in Madrid and El Moncayo. The opening and closing scenes were shot at the Aldeadávila Dam, between Spain and Portugal. Although uncredited, most of those scenes were actually shot on the Portuguese side of the river, overlooking the Spanish side.

Railway scenes were shot in the following locations in particular:

• Estación de Delicias (Madrid).
• La Calahorra (Granada) (sequence of the funeral of the mother).
• Soria-Cañuelo Station.
• Navaleno Station.
• Candilichera (Campo de Gómara).
• Villaseca de Arciel (Campo de Gómara).
• Great Pain (Community of the 150 Peoples of the Earth of Soria).
• San Leonardo de Yagüe (Soria).
• Villar del Campo.
• Yanguas.
• Kill her from Almazán.

The first sequences of the second part of the film were shot in San Leonardo de Yagüe, the train stop in the woods and the meeting with Strelnikov in his armored train. The scenes at Varýkino's residence were filmed in Candilichera (Soria). In various places in the Province of Soria, practically all the exteriors were filmed, using all the railway lines that were in use at that time. The dam that appears at the beginning and end of the film is that of Aldeadávila de la Ribera, in the province of Salamanca. The burial scenes, at the beginning of the film, with some mountains in the background, are shot in La Calahorra, province of Granada. In Madrid, the Moscow scenes were filmed in what is currently Silvano street near the Canillas cemetery, at that time an open field. A set of some 20,000 m² was built that recreated Moscow, with its layout of electrified tram tracks, along which even two trams ceded by the Municipal Transport Company circulated. It was also filmed at the Delicias Station.

The director, David Lean, and the protagonist, Omar Sharif, preparing a shot at the pin of San Leonardo de Yagüe.

Other winter scenes, mainly landscape scenes and Yuri's escape from Red Army partisans, were mainly shot in Finland, near the border with the then USSR. The winter scenes of the family moving to Yuriatin were shot in Canada. The locomotive seen in the film is one of the Spanish RENFE locomotives, Class 240 (ex-1400 MZA), and Strelnikov's armored train is towed by a Class 141F Mikado locomotive. A scene on the train became notorious for the accident suffered by the Hungarian actress Lilí Murati, who slipped while trying to get on a moving train. Although she fell under the wagon she was not seriously injured and returned to work after three weeks, Lean appears to have used part of her accident at the end of the film.

Nicolas Roeg was the original cinematographer and worked on some scenes, but after an argument with Lean he left and was replaced by Freddie Young. In some countries, the film ran for a long time, holding a box office record. For several years, movie companies re-released it at the request of the public. The photos of the leading actors were commissioned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to the Hungarian-Spanish photographer Juan Gyenes. He made them in his studio at calle Isabel la Católica, 12, in Madrid.

Premiere

The film opened theatrically on December 22, 1965, earning $111.7 million in the United States and Canada across all its releases and is eighth on the Inflation Adjusted Grossing Film List. entered the 1966 Cannes International Film Festival. In 2002, Warner Bros. released the version of Doctor Zhivago on DVD (two-disc disc), and another anniversary edition on Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc) A three-disc set including a book).

Critical reception

Upon its initial release, Doctor Zhivago was criticized for its romanticization of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times felt that the film's focus in the love story between Zhivago and Lara trivialized the events of the Russian Revolution and the resulting civil war, but was impressed by the film's visuals. Also another criticism was from Richard Roud in The Guardian, who wrote: "In the movie, the revolution boils down to a rather annoying series of events: getting firewood, finding a seat on a train, and lots of nasty proles are annoying. Certainly more than a series of consumer problems, at least for Zhivago himself, the central point of the book was that while Zhivago disapproved of the direction the revolution was taking, he had approved of it in principle. They weren't tragedies." In a positive review, Time Magazine called the film "Literary, old-fashioned, soulful, and utterly romantic."

Reviewing it for its 30th anniversary, film critic Roger Ebert called it "an example of fine old-fashioned craftsmanship in the service of a romantic vision," writing that "the story, especially as simplified by Lean and its screenwriter, Robert Bolt, it seems political in the same sense Gone with the Wind is political, as spectacle and backdrop, without ideology ", concluding that the political content is treated mostly as "spectacle". Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent reviewed the film for its 50th anniversary and noted the "extraordinary artistry" 3. 4; by director David Lean, but found the film bordering on 'kitsch'. Macnab also felt that Maurice Jarre's musical score still stood up but was critical of the English accents.

Awards

Oscars

Golden Globe

The film was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards, and won five awards.