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Dr Zhivago
- favourite film

They don’t make ’em like this anymore. If they tried with a contemporary cast of the quality director David Lean assembled for Zhivago, the budget would make Greece’s deficit look like pocket money: Julie Christie , Omar Sharif (who had impressed Lean in his Lawrence of Arabia ); Alec Guinness ; Geraldine Chaplin; Tom Courtenay ; Rita Tushingham; Ralph Richardson ; Rod Steiger... And it was not just in front of the camera where the talent was legion: Nick Roeg, who went on to directing fame himself with such classics as Don’t Look Now was one of the cinematographers, along with three-time Oscar-winner Freddie Young (also director of photography on Battle of Britain and Goodbye Mr Chips among myriad others); the Oscar-winning script was by Robert Bolt , who won the award again the following year for A Man for All Seasons ; and the haunting score was by Maurice Jarre.
Bolt distils the essence of Boris Pasternak’s great novel into a workable movie, but it still lasts over three hours, though without longeurs. There is more love than history in the re-telling, but great and terrible events still frame the stories which take us from Russia just before WWI through the first decades of the Soviet Union. As effectively the narrator Guinness (who famously fell out with Lean on the set) gives a performance of stillness and depth, exuding loyalty, love and menace, setting the tone for the piece. For nearly 200 minutes we shiver with the protagonists (though much of the shooting was in 30 degree heat in Spain); we share their fears and hopes; we care about them. The film involves us. They don’t do that much anymore either.

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