Doctor Zhivago (film)

The film takes place mostly against a backdrop since the World War I years, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Russian Civil War. A narrative framing device, set in the late 1940s or early 1950s, involves KGB Lieutenant General Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago searching for the daughter of his half brother, Doctor Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago, and Larissa ("Lara"). Yevgraf believes a young woman, Tonya Komarova, may be his niece and tells her the story of her father's life.

After the burial of his mother in rural Russia, the orphaned child Yuri Zhivago is taken to be cared for by his mother's friends in Moscow: Alexander and Anna Gromeko. In 1913, Zhivago, as a medical student in training, but a poet at heart, is reunited with their daughter Tonya when she returns to Moscow after a long visit to Paris, and they become engaged. Lara, only 17 years, is involved in an affair with her mother's friend, the older well-connected Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky. One night, the idealistic reformer Pavel Pavlovich "Pasha" Antipov is wounded by sabre-wielding militia during a violent attack on a peaceful civil demonstration. Pasha runs to Lara, whom he wishes to marry, to treat his wound and asks her to hide a gun he picked up at that bloody event.

Tsarist Cossacks attack a peaceful demonstration.

After Lara's mother learns of her daughter's affair with Komarovsky, she attempts suicide, for which medical treatment is given by Zhivago, alerted by the man to Lara's home. When Komarovsky learns of Lara's intentions to marry Pasha, he tries first to dissuade her, and when refused he rapes her In revenge. Humiliated Lara then takes Pasha's pistol hidden for him, follows Komarovsky to his Christmas party, and shoots at him, barely wounding his hand. The man insists that no action be taken against Lara, who is soon escorted out by Pasha who happened to be around, whereas Komarovsky's wound is taken care of by Zhivago. Although devastated by Lara's ill relations with Komarovsky, Pasha marries her, and they have a daughter named Katya.

During World War I, Yevgraf Zhivago is sent by the Bolsheviks to subvert the Imperial Russian Army. Yuri Zhivago is drafted and becomes a battlefield doctor. Pasha is reported missing in action following a daring attack on German forces, and Lara enlists as a nurse to search for him. During the February 1917 Revolution, Zhivago enlists Lara's help to tend to the wounded. Together they run a field hospital for six months, during which time radical changes ensue throughout Russia as Vladimir Lenin returns from exile to Moscow. Before their departure there, Yuri and Lara eventually fall in love, yet Yuri remains true to Tonya, by then his wife.

After the war, Yuri returns to Tonya and their children and settles at their house in Moscow, which was split and divided into tenements by the new Soviet government. Yevgraf, now a member of the Cheka, informs him that his poems were condemned as antagonistic to Communism. Further he provides Yuri the travel passes and documents to escape the austere life of Moscow to the far-away Varykino estate in the Ural Mountains. The family board a heavily guarded freight train, bound to be travelling through contested territory, being secured by the infamous Bolshevik commander named Strelnikov, who is in fact Pasha Antipov.

While the train is stopped early one morning, Zhivago wanders near the armoured train of Strelnikov and summoned by his guards to his office. He recognizes him as Pasha Antipov, who informs Yuri within a tense interview that his estranged wife Lara is now living in the town of Yuriatin, still occupied by the anti-Communist White forces, and nevertheless lets Zhivago return safely to the train and his family. They settle and live peacefully in a cottage at the Varykino estate until Zhivago contacts Lara in nearby Yuriatin. They surrender to their long-repressed feelings, although Tonya has become pregnant. Yuri travels to Yuriatin to break it off with Lara, only to be abducted by the Communist partisans on the trip back, to join their field medical service.

After two years, Zhivago deserts the partisans and trudges days and nights through deep snow to Yuriatin, where he again finds Lara. She informs him that Tonya had reached her while searching for him and is now back in Moscow. However, as Lara hands Yuri a sealed letter mailed six months earlier to her own address, it was revealed that Tonya, her father, and their children were deported by then and are living in Paris. Eventually Yuri and Lara renew their relationship, but one night Komarovsky arrives and warns them they are being watched by the Cheka because of Lara's marriage to Strelnikov. Komarovsky offers her and Yuri his help in leaving Russia, which they promptly refuse. Instead they return to the abandoned Varykino estate, taking up residence in the banned main house, where Yuri begins writing his "Lara" poems which will later make him famous, but also entail apparent government displeasure. Komarovsky however reappears in their house and informs Yuri that Strelnikov was captured five miles away, while apparently looking for Lara, and then committed suicide en route to his own execution. Hence Lara is now in real risk, as the only one left to the Cheka's anticommunist retaliation. Zhivago sends Lara and Katya away with Komarovsky, recently appointed as regional official in the independent Far Eastern Republic. Refusing to accompany the despised person, Yuri remains behind to face his fate.

Years later, during the Stalinist era, Yevgraf meets Yuri in Moscow, sick and destitute, and gets him a new suit and a job. Looking out the window of a crowded tram, Yuri sees Lara walk by. Unable to attract her attention, he struggles to get off at the next stop, and runs after her, but suffers a fatal heart attack before she sees him. Yuri's funeral is well-attended, despite the ban on his poetry at the time. Lara approaches Yevgraf at the funeral, and tells him she gave birth to Yuri's daughter in the Far East, but the girl was lost when the Russian Civil War broke out there. After vainly looking for her, with Yevgraf's help, in various orphanages, Lara disappears; Yevgraf thinks she must have died in one of the labour camps.

While Yevgraf still believes that Tonya Komarova is Yuri and Lara's daughter, she is not convinced, and still insists that her father was Komarovsky, who later let go of her hand and lost her in the street. When about to leave with her fiancé, Yevgraf notices Tanya's balalaika, the instrument which Yuri's mother was so gifted at playing. Questioned further, Tanya confirms that she is indeed self-taught at it, whereupon her boyfriend proclaims what a 'great artist' she is, to which Yevgraf smiles, "Ah well, then it's a gift!", leaving no doubt as to whose daughter she is.

Boris Pasternak's novel was published in the West amidst 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 an Italian called D'Angelo to be delivered to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a left-wing Italian publisher who published it shortly thereafter, in 1957. Helped by a Soviet campaign against the novel, it became a sensation throughout the non-communist world. It spent 26 weeks atop The New York Times best-seller list.

Pasternak was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. While the citation noted his poetry, it was understood that the prize was mainly for Doctor Zhivago, which the Soviet government saw as an anti-Soviet work, thus interpreting the award of the Nobel Prize as a gesture hostile to the Soviet Union. A target of the Soviet government's fervent campaign to label him a traitor, Pasternak felt compelled to refuse the Prize. The situation became an international cause célèbre and made Pasternak a Cold War symbol of resistance to Soviet communism.

The film treatment by David Lean was proposed 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 and participated in the screen shots with Christie, but (after watching the results with David Lean) was the one who suggested Omar Sharif.[6][7] 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 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 (1965). Sharif's son Tarek was cast as the young Zhivago in the film and Sharif directed his son as a way to get closer to his character.[8]

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

Because the book was banned in the Soviet Union, it could not be filmed there. Lean's experience filming a part of Lawrence of Arabia in Spain, access to CEA Studios, and the guarantee of snow in some parts of Spain led to his choosing the country as the primary location for filming.[9] However, the weather predictions failed and David Lean's team experienced Spain's warmest winter in 50 years.[9] As a result, some scenes were filmed in interiors with artificial snow made with dust from a nearby marble quarry. The team filmed some locations with heavy snow, such as the snowy landscape in Strelnikov's train sequence, somewhere in Campo de Gómara near Soria.[10] The film was shot over ten months,[11] with the entire Moscow set being built from scratch outside Madrid. Most of the scenes covering Zhivago's and Lara's service in World War I were filmed in Soria, as was the Varykino estate. 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 also filmed in Spain; 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 (77 °F). Other locations include Madrid-Delicias railway station in Madrid and the Moncayo Range.[12] The initial and final 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.

Other winter sequences, mostly landscape scenes and Yuri's escape from the partisans, were filmed in Finland. Winter scenes of the family traveling to Yuriatin by rail were filmed in Canada. The locomotives seen in the film are Spanish locomotives like the RENFE Class 240 (ex-1400 MZA), and Strelnikov's armoured train is towed by the RENFE Class 141F Mikado locomotive. One train scene became notorious for the supposed fate that befell Lili Muráti, a Hungarian actress, who slipped clambering onto a moving train. Although she fell under the wagon, she escaped serious injury and returned to work within three weeks (and did not perish or lose a limb).[13] Lean appears to have used part of her accident in the film's final cut.[14]

Nicolas Roeg was the original Director of Photography and worked on some scenes, but after an argument with Lean, left and was replaced by Freddie Young.[15]

Released theatrically on 22 December 1965, the film went on to gross $111.7 million in the United States and Canada across all of its releases and is the eighth highest-grossing film of all time adjusted for inflation.[2] The film sold an estimated 124.1 million tickets in the United States and Canada,[16] equivalent to $1.1 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2018.[17]

In addition, it is the ninth highest-grossing film worldwide after adjusting for inflation.[3][18] The film sold an estimated 248.2 million tickets worldwide, equivalent to $2.1 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2014.[3] It is the most popular film of all-time in Italy with 22.9 million admissions.[19] It was the highest-grossing film in Germany with theatrical rentals of 39 million Deutschmarks from 12.75 million admissions[20][21] and also the most popular film of all-time in Switzerland with over 1 million admissions.[22] In the United Kingdom, it was the most popular film of the year with 11.2 million admissions[23] and was the third-highest-grossing film of all-time in Australia with theatrical rentals of A$2.5 million.[24] The film's 2015 limited re-release in the United Kingdom grossed $138,493.[25]

The film was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.[26]

On 24 September 2002, the 35th Anniversary version of Doctor Zhivago was issued on DVD (two-disc set),[27] and another Anniversary Edition in 2010 on Blu-ray (a three-disc set that includes a book).[28]

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies – No. 39
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions – No. 7