Tom Courtenay Archives - Sean Kelly On Movies

This past weekend, marking the 60th anniversary of the film, I attended a TIFF Cinematheque screening of the 1965 Russian Revolution romantic epic Doctor Zhivago. Dr. Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) was a doctor and poet in early 20th century Moscow, right as the Russian Revolution was beginning to happen. One of the revolutionaries is Pavel "Pasha" Antipov (Tom Courtenay), who is engaged to be wed to Larissa Ameliava "Lara" Antipova (Julie Christie). Lara enters into an affair with Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), which quickly turns sour, with Yuri witnessing Lara's attempt on Victor's life. Yuri and Lara's paths cross again during the First World War when they are both stationed in a field hospital. Despite falling in love with each other, they both decide to return to their respective spouses, with Yuri married at this time to Tonya Gromeko (Geraldine Chaplin), the daughter of the couple who took in the orphaned Yuri as a child. After the war, Yuri and Tonya are forced to flee Moscow, as Russia enters into a Civil War. It is while hiding in the countryside that Yuri encounters Lara yet again. Doctor Zhivago Synopsis Doctor Zhivago is a film directed by David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia), based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak. The film stars Egyptian actor Omar Sharif as the titular Dr. Yuri Zhivago, who is joined by Julie Christie as his forbidden love interest Lara Antipova. The story of Doctor Zhivago is framed by Yuri's half-brother Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago (Alec Guinness), searching for the lost daughter of Yuri and Lara, whom he believes to be a young dam worker. The epic-length story of Doctor Zhivago begins in 1913 in Moscow, where Yuri and Lara live separate yet intersecting lives. It is not until they are stationed in a field hospital together during the First World War that Yuri and Lara begin to fall in love. The two finally consummate their feelings for each other while hiding from the growing Soviet forces in Russia, but the growing civil war in the country threatens to separate them once and for war. My Thoughts on Doctor Zhivago Doctor Zhivago was director David Lean's follow-up to his 1962 Best Picture-winning epic Lawrence of Arabia, with Omar Sharif graduating to lead actor status after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia. Doctor Zhivago also had sizable Oscar success, being nominated for ten Academy Awards and winning 5, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score. However, Doctor Zhivago ended up losing the Best Picture Oscar to The Sound of Music. On a technical note, Doctor Zhivago is a quite well-made film and it deserved the Oscars it won for Freddie Young's Cinematography John Box and Terence Marsh's Art Direction and Maurice Jarre's Score. However, Doctor Zhivago was an epic-length film that didn't need to be epic-length. I was quite bored to tears during Doctor Zhivago's 3h 20m running time, as the film couldn't settle on whether it wanted to be a romantic drama, a war film, or a mix of both. While typical of a film made in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War, it is quite jarring to watch Doctor Zhivago, a film set entirely in Russia, yet there not being a single Russian accent used. Most of the cast, including Julie Christie, Tom Courtenay, and Alec Guinness were British, so at least there was a level of consistency among the character's accents. Consequently, Omar Sharif's Egyptian accent makes him stand out the most, making his titular character the least convincing as a Russian. Due to the story's anti-communist themes, the 1957 book that Doctor Zhivago was based on was banned in the USSR. As such, the film ended up being shot primarily in Spain. Save for a background shot of the Kremlin at one point, it could be very easy to believe that Doctor Zhivago was taking place in a country other than Russia. Doctor Zhivago was remade in 2002 as a British miniseries that starred Hans Matheson, Keira Knightley, and Sam Neill. Apart from being a longer adaptation, I do not know if the 2002 Doctor Zhivago is more faithful to its source material. However, I do know it hasn't reached the same level of acclaim as David Lean's film. After directing back-to-back films that would receive Ten Oscar nominations, Doctor Zhivago ended David Lean's status as an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker for two decades. He would later receive a career-high eleven nominations for 1984's A Passage to India, which sadly had a career-low two wins. Sixty years after its release, the lasting legacy of Doctor Zhivago probably depends on the generation you were born into. As a millennial seeing it for the first time, my final opinion is that it is a well made, yet way too long product of its time period.

Tom Courtenay

Doctor Zhivago – Premium Classics

45 Years

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