Doctor Zhivago

Production year: 1965

Drama PG-13   Running time: 3:20 

IMDB rating:   8.0     Aspect: Wide;  Languages: English, French, Spanish;  Subtitles: English, French, Spanish;  Audio: DD 5.1

David Lean focused all his talent as an epic-maker on Boris Pasternak's sweeping novel about a doctor-poet in revolutionary Russia. The results may sometimes veer toward soap opera, especially with the screen frequently filled with adoring close-ups of Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, but Lean's gift for cramming the screen with spectacle is not to be denied. The streets of Moscow, the snowy steppes of Russia, the house in the country taken over by ice; these are re-created with Lean's unerring sense of grandness. The movie is so lush and so long that it becomes an irresistible wallow, even when logic suffers--like Gone with the Wind before it and Titanic after. Sharif, who achieved stardom in Lean's previous film, Lawrence of Arabia, mostly looks noble, but the supporting cast is spiky: Rod Steiger as a fat-cat monster, Tom Courtenay as a self-righteous revolutionary, and Klaus Kinski and Alec Guinness in smaller roles. Geraldine Chaplin, in her adult debut, plays the doctor's compliant wife. Robert Bolt's screenplay won one of the film's five Oscars, with another going to perhaps the most immediately recognizable element of the movie: Maurice Jarre's romantic music, with its hugely popular "Lara's Theme" weaving in and out of a swooning score.

Director

Features

Audio commentary
Cast biographies/profiles/filmographies
Featurettes/Behind-The-Scenes/Documentaries
Interviews
Trailers/TV spots

Special features

Feature-Length Audio Commentary by Omar Sharif, Rod Steiger and Sandra Lean
Introduction by Omar Sharif
30th-Anniversary Documentary Doctor Zhivago: The Making of a Russian Epic
10 Vintage Documentaries
Music-Only Audio Track
Vintage Audio Track Interviews
December 1965 New York Premiere Coverage
Cast/ Director Career Highlights
New Commemorative Two-Part 45th-Anniversary Retrospective
Doctor Zhivago