Team Experience: The Best of 'Doctor Zhivago' (1965)
Saturday, December 26, 2015 at 12:00PM 
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens breaking box office records daily we thought we'd look back at another colossal hit, which is celebrating its 50th birthday this week. Though it places in the the ten all-time biggest movie blockbusters, David Lean's adaptation of the best seller Doctor Zhivago is oddly among the least celebrated/remembered of those record-shattering successes. But it wasn't always so. Drop it right between 1939's Gone With the Wind and 1997's Titanic and you have the complete trilogy box set of 3 hour plus epic doomed romances that movie audiences obsessed over and obsessed over and obsessed over. (Binge screen them all now and you'll be done in about 11 hours!)
Though Omar Sharif (who plays the title character Yuri Zhivago) recently passed away, the other three members of Zhivago's political/romantic quartet are still very much with us: Julie Christie is, of course, one of the all time greats and though she's resistant to working much since her last triumph in Away From Her (2007), Lara is just one of many standouts in her great filmography; Oscar nominated Tom Courtenay co-stars as Pasha, Lara's idealogue husband (and you can and should see Courtenay in theaters now as Charlotte Rampling's confused husband in 45 Years); and Geraldine Chaplin (who did fine work recently in the Dominican Republic Oscar submission Sand Dollars) completes the romantic quartet as Zhivago's wife Tonya.
For the 50th Anniversary, four members of Team Experience agreed to share their favorite scenes after the jump...
That Doctor Zhivago works, under the threat of being weighed down by so many arcs and so many simultaneous things happening, is half the pleasure itself of it. Love story it may be, it’s interested in more than just its romantic central pair. The moment I went from merely liking it to loving it is about an hour in. It’s that moment when divergent arcs begin hurtling together – catastrophic for the characters, but exciting for the audience as the after effects will ripple through the entire film. Lara, recently wronged by Komarovsky races off to confront him at his house and is directed to a Christmas party where an engagement between Yuri and Tonya is about to be announced. On the way she’s intercepted by (soon-to-be) jilted lover Pasha. It’s hard to say where the scene ends and begins, locations change from Komarovsky’s house to the streets to the dancefloor a single forward movement makes it feel like one “scene”. The moment peaks when Lara enters the hall, though to “confront” Komarovsky. There’s a gorgeous moment when Lara emerges furtively from behind a statue and crosses Tonya as Yuri enters the scene and Lara drifts off. It’s such a brief, but striking, encapsulation of the way the film is always juggling with who is at the centre of the story. And, it’s a key moment of Geraldine Chaplin in the forefront of the shot. As the film continues and poor Pasha grows bitter the film persists above traditional romance by actually granting Tonya dignity as someone more than incidental.
-Andrew Kendall
You don't have to be an expert in body language to see that Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) and Tonya Gromeko (Geraldine Chaplin) aren't the happiest couple. But what also comes through in my favorite moment is not so much unhappiness with each other, but with the circumstances they find themselves in... and I don’t just mean the Christmas Party at the Sventitskys.
Yuri’s first love may always be Julie Christie’s Lara, but he does truly love Tonya, too. When they eventually separate it is not by choice but fate that keeps them apart, just like it did Yuri and Lara before. The image of Sharif and Chaplin sitting on those steps encapsulates, for me, Doctor Zhivago‘s approach to love and relationships. They’re grand and romantic, at times, but they’re also complicated, full of hard work and compromises. Doesn’t mean they’re not worth it.
-Sebastian Nebel
Tom Courtenay's Pasha/Strelnikov was the film's sole acting nomination
When the idealistic, but meek, Pasha (Tom Courtenay) is “last” seen in Doctor Zhivago, he’s off to join the Revolution, leaving behind his beautiful new wife Lara to fend for herself, after all the Revolution means more than anything as petty as love. Then one day Lara finds herself a “war widow”, which helps her accept the title doctor’s love. Therefore it’s completely unexpected to discover that Pasha isn’t only alive, but has become someone else! Not physically, but spiritually and emotionally. As we listen to horrendous stories of a certain Strelnikov who burns villages down to the ground without thinking twice, poor Pasha never crosses our head, and yet all of a sudden there he is. David Lean mercilessly cuts away to show a woman’s tragic face, followed by a severe shot of the new Pasha. It’s so chilling, that we’re deservedly sent to our intermission afterwards.
-Jose Solis
When I think of Doctor Zhivago, I always see their eyes first. It's not just that the wintry fur costume designs are constantly framing Sharif and Christie's eyes but how striking their juxtaposed beauty actually is. It's a study in contrasts with Omar Sharif's warm honey and Julie Christie's cool blue locked in longing and what-might-have-been fascination. My favorite scene comes late in the film when they enter Zhivago's abandoned Varykino estate which is equally contradictory. It's so crystalline that it looks weirdly fragile and diorama-like though its not breaking anytime soon, all sheathed in snow and ice. This ice palace, like their love affair, is breathtakingly beautiful to imagine but in the end impossible to inhabit.
-Nathaniel R
Have you ever seen Doctor Zhivago? If you have what do you remember most clearly about it?
Reader Comments (16)
My AP World History teacher assigned us Dr. Zhivago to read over a school break my sophomore year of high school. I wasn't old enough to process or appreciate such a dense work of Russian literature (and I was pretty irritated at having to do so much work over break) that I found myself hating the novel. So when my teacher announced that we'd be watching the film in class as part of our unit on European political revolutions, I was less than thrilled. Fifteen minutes into the movie, I was utterly captivated. What was dull and dense on the page was electric on screen - and that score! It was my first exposure to Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine Chaplin, and the luminous Julie Christie, and I've never forgotten it. In a fortunate stroke of timing, that was the year of Away From Her, and because of Doctor Zhivago I fully appreciated Julie Christie's status as a cinema icon and was thrilled to see her pop up in the Oscar race (even if I was rooting for Marion in the end).
I would later find out that Doctor Zhivago was one of my late grandmother's all-time favorite movies, and now any time I see those sweeping shots or piercing romantic glances, I'm reminded of her. Because of that especially, Doctor Zhivago will always be a special movie for me.
This book is not dull at all. It's brilliant.
I really need to give this another shot. I think I went in with my expectations too highly formed after hearing about it for years. I liked it but also found it a struggle at times.
But two things that didn't disappoint: Julie and the ice palace were knockouts.
@calroth, I've revisited the book as an adult and I agree with you - it's marvelous. But as a 15 year old being forced to read it over my spring break, I think it just was too much for me to handle.
I think this is a great film as it is one of the finest epics ever. Plus, I know everyone wanted Julie Christie but I was more into Geraldine Chaplin.
Another of David Lean's masterpieces. Also underappreciated is his last film, A Passage to India.
It was truly a blockbuster and a work of art. Too bad it had the misfortune of opening the same year as The Sound Of Music. IMO Lean's DZ is far and away the better film.
I wonder if Tom Courtenay has a better chance in supporting this year instead of lead. I guess that would be category fraud but I'd love to see him surprise on Oscar Nominations Day.
Definitely think this needs to be seen (at least on first go) on the big screen. It truly does help.
Julie Christie was the greatest of the 60s screen beauties.
This milestone is one of the great screen epics. Never has so much visual splendor been used to equate love with dignity. Julie Christie seduced the world. David Lean stunned it.
Christie for me should have won the Oscar for this film and not for DARLING
Christie's Oscar for Darling is only one of two Best Actress wins for a romantic movie whether drama or comedy to win the prize and remain unimpeachable. The other is Diane Keaton as Annie Hall. Which means every other instance in the history of the category is up for debate if not outright scorn.
Darling and Shampoo are my favorite Julie Christie movies and performances.
Well Zhivago is also a romantic movie, albeit a drama one. Besides Lara is actually the role for which Christie is most remembered
1965 was the kind of magical year for Julie that very few actresses enjoy. Greer Garson had one in 42, Diane Keaton in 77, Jessica Lange in 82. Two brilliant turns that seal a performer's place in the cinematic heavens.
I had the good fortune to know "Doctor Zhivago"'s peerless three-time Oscar winning cinematographer, Freddie Young. Freddie told me that David Lean ended up being quite resentful of all the attention Freddie's work on "Lawrence of Arabia garnered -- so much so that when Lean was assembling his crew for "Zhivago," he hired all key technical artists from "Lawrence" (Production Designer John Box, Costume Designer Phyllis Dalton, Composer Maurice Jarre, etc.) except for Freddie. Instead, he chose Freddie's assistant on "Lawrence," Nic Roeg, to be his cinematographer. Freddie was hurt, but said there was nothing he could do. Freddie said his telephone rang in London one night after midnight after "Zhivago" had been filming for a couple of weeks, and it was Lean calling from Madrid to say that things weren't working out with Nic Roeg and wondered if Freddie would take over. Freddie told me he knew it was the hardest phone call Lean probably ever made because he (Lean) hated to ever admit he was wrong. Freddie happened to be free at the time, but said he told Lean he'd have to think about it and see if he could get out of some other commitments. He called Lean back the next day, accepted the job, and the rest, as they say, is history. Freddie told me he was stunned when he won his second Oscar for "Zhivago." He said he'd been assured by friends in Hollywood that there was no way he would win over Ted McCord's work on "Sound of Music." Freddie, in fact, never attended the Oscars despite his three wins. He said he never thought he'd win.
"Complete trilogy box set". Make that a quadrilogy box set of 3 hour doomed romances; 1981's Reds from Warren Beatty is another.
Every decade had it's "Hollywood It Girl" that every man lusted over. There was Olivia DeHaviland in the 1930s, Rita Hayworth in the 40s, Marylin Monroe in the 50s, Julie Christie in the 60s, Fay Dunaway in the 70s, Michelle Pfeiffer in the 80s, arguably Cameron Diaz in the 90s, Anne Hathaway in the 2000s and Jennifer Lawrence in the 10s.