How had I never seen... "Doctor Zhivago"?

Every once in a while we ask Team Experience members to finally get around to a famous film they've been meaning to watch forever. Here's Christopher James...

I hate to say it, but when does one put on a three hour epic? The time never quite seems right, especially in a pre-quarantine world. That’s why David Lean’s epic extravaganzas had long been blind spots in my filmography. Both The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia become instant personal favorites after finally watching them for the first time in the past five years. Yet, somehow Doctor Zhivago (1965) always seemed just a bridge, or perilous train ride, too far. When I would think of it, I would picture the sets and costumes from stills. But was it worth sitting through over three hours of a movie just for, in the words of Aretha Franklin, “gowns, beautiful gowns”? Luckily, the epic is way more than just its trappings. As Team Experience gushed a few years back, there are so many memorable scenes and subplots in this involving romantic quartet.

To compliment Doctor Zhivago appropriately, one must go down each Oscar craft category one by one. It’s a technically stunning achievement that is beautiful, towering and simultaneously warm and cold all in the same breath...

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Links: The Wife, Anika Noni Rose, Kiss the Boy

• Oscilloscope Musings Interesting piece about Zach Snyder's Suckerpunch and how it reflects various old movies, especially the musical Gold Diggers of 1933
• Cartoon Brew on the making of a new animated feature Big Fish & Begonia, now in select cities
• Deadline Jumanji (2017) broke a long held record just barely toppling Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002) to become Sony's all time biggest domestic hit

lots more news and entertainment tidbits after the jump including Omar Sharif, Glenn Close, Melissa McCarthy, Anika Noni Rose and Keiynan Lonsdale...

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Team Experience: The Best of 'Doctor Zhivago' (1965)

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...

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Omar Sharif in Egypt

Having already honored Omar Sharif's passing through a Hollywood lens, please welcome new contributor Murtada Elfadl with a look at Sharif's relationship to Egyptian cinema and his leading lady there - Editor.

Faten and Omar in 1955The first thought I had when I heard of Omar Sharif’s passing last week was “Oh, he’s joining Faten!”. Faten Hamama was arguably the biggest female movie star in the Arab World and enjoyed a 50+ year career. She was also Sharif’s leading lady in the 1950s and 1960s. It was through the prism of his relationship with Hamama that I came to know and love Sharif. By the time I was growing up in Sudan in the 1980s her output had shrunk to only a movie every few years but at our house we spent many a night watching her old movies on TV. And watching Faten meant watching Omar.

Sharif’s relationship with Hamama defined his early roles. He was plucked from obscurity and chosen to star with her - the biggest Arab movie star and #1 box office draw - in 1954’s Struggle in the Valley. Their chemistry was combustible on and off screen. It was quite a scandal of the time as Hamama was a married woman and it was the 1950s in a conservative Eastern society. They were of different religions, she’s Muslim, he was Christian. Their love affair had all the ingredients of a soap opera. She got divorced! He converted!  They were the Taylor / Burton of Egypt or the Angelina / Brad of the 1950s Middle East. It speaks to their popularity that they were not shunned by the public and the industry a la Ingrid Bergman whose own love affair / scandal happened just a few years before theirs. [More...]

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Omar Sharif (1932-2015)

Sharif Photographed by Andrew Walker in 2011Hollywood's first and still only Egyptian movie star passed away at 83 today of a heart attack. It had recently been announced that he was suffering from Alzheimers and after such a full life this may feel like a mercy to some, though his loved one are surely grieving and our hearts go out to them.

Though moviegoers roughly 35 and up surely remember him, here's the gist of it for younger budding cinephiles: Sharif began and ended his career in Arabic language cinema but in the vast middle (1960s-1990s) he achieved global stardom via Hollywood and British cinema. His English language debut Lawrence of Arabia (1962) brought him a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and he became a genuine superstar in short order, headlining one of the all time biggest box office smashes (Doctor Zhivago, 1965). In his third enduring classic from that decade he helped Barbra Streisand ascend into the pantheon in her film debut Funny Girl (1968). 

In fact, his performances in those three hits are rather fine illustrations of what was so special about his onscreen persona: his generosity and a certain intangible 'eye of the beholder' transference. He was one of the greatest romantic leading men precisely because he seemed so believably in thrall to the particular charismas of his co-stars. And he had great ones: Sophia Loren, Barbra Streisand, Julie Christie, Peter O'Toole, Julie Andrews and more. 

And while he drank in their inimitable beauty, he looked like this:

Dr Zhivago (1965)a portrait from the 1950s when he starred regularly in Egyptian cinema
The Tamarind Seed (1974) and More Than a Miracle (1967)

Double the pleasure, then, for moviegoers who were ready to swoon. And swoon they did, all over the world. 

What's your favorite Omar Sharif performance?