Doctor Zhivago (film)

In a World Gone Mad, One Man chose to make a difference... By becoming a Doctor!

Legendary generation-spanning epic about The Russian Revolution starring Omar Sharif as a doctor meeting the challenges of a World Gone Mad. Directed by David Lean as a follow-up to Lawrence of Arabia with similarly dramatic vistas, this time of the Russian steppe.

Featuring Julie Christie as Lara, the object of Yuri's affections, and Rod Steiger as the manipulative Komarovsky. Other cast members include Alec Guinness, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, and Ralph Richardson.

For its epic scope, Sharif's performance, and David Lean's visual style, the film is generally praised as a classic. It is also notable for Maurice Jarre's music score, which includes the world famous "Lara's Theme".

It also the heralded the last of MGM's great epic movies, as they announced even during production. They simply didn't have the moolah to finance these vast vista works with thousands of extras and a cast full of stars: the next movie they made was one twentieth of this cost.

A Russian version of the movie was done in 2006 with a total running time of over 8 hours, thus hewing closer to the book.

Masterpiece Theatre in 2002 also made a Miniseries.[1] Perhaps could have been the basis for a High Concept Forensic Drama; (Burdened by equipment shortages, Dr. Zhivago solves tough cases... IN SOVIET RUSSIA!) but, fortunately, it wasn't.

Based on the epic novel by Russian poet and writer Boris Leonidovich Pasternak.

Tropes used in Doctor Zhivago (film) include:
  • Adorkable: Pasha Antipov
  • Beard of Sorrow: Both the film and the TV serial show Yuri growing a beard when he is conscripted into the Red Partisan army.
  • Big Bad Wolves: You will fear wolf howls in 40 below...
  • Bishonen: Pasha Antipov, complete with spectacles.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Downer Ending, depending how you look at it.
    • The downer ending is that Yuri and Lara die apart, with Yuri especially dying of a heart attack chasing after a woman he thinks is Lara. The bittersweet ending is that Zhivago's adopted brother, trying to find Yuri and Lara's love child years later, thinks he's found the young woman. However, the young woman refuses to admit it, fearful that the Soviet general would punish her rather than delight in finding her.
  • Book Ends: The streetcar scenes with Yuri and Lara at the beginning and end of the film.
  • Cool Train: The armored war train.
  • Damsel in Distress: Lara.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Zhivago takes this tone with the Party delegates who now live in his old house in Moscow upon his return from World War I. They notice. Oh, yes, they notice.

Delegate: (Reviewing Zhivago's discharge papers) Holy Cross? (beat) What?
Zhivago: Holy Cross Hospital. It's on--
Tonya: (interrupting) The Second Reformed Hospital, he means.
Zhivago: Oh. (beat) Good. It needed reforming.
Delegate: (beat, with icy We Are Not Amused gaze)

    • After pointedly reminding Dr. Zhivago that he's "been listening to rumormongers, Comrade. There is no typhus in our city," the delegate shortly thereafter has Zhivago pulled from work to discreetly diagnose an ill man in the house.

Zhivago: Why? Is it typhus?
Zhivago: (after inspecting patient) It isn't typhus. It's another disease we don't have in Moscow: starvation.
Delegate: That seems to give you satisfaction.
Zhivago: It would give me satisfaction to hear you admit it.
Delegate: Would it? Why?
Zhivago: Because it is so.
Delegate: Your attitude is noticed, you know. Oh, yes, it's been noticed!

    • He must have learned it from his medical professor. While watching a piano recital with his wife:

Mrs Kurt: Boris! This is genius!
Professor Kurt:(looking bored) "Really? I thought it was Rachmaninoff. I'm going for a smoke.

Remember: In Soviet Russia,Omar Sharif Ogles YOU!

  1. ↑ Starring Hans Matheson, Keira Knightley and Sam Neill. It was originally intended to star Ralph Fiennes as Zhivago and Jeremy Irons as Komarovsky
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