Reviews

The strength of this movie, besides its wonderful handling of the historic sweep and scope of the production, is the strong storytelling. Some complain that it is not a fair representation of the novel. This is true. The novel tells a substantially different, more complicated story, and Lean and Bolt have developed their own story to tell, using the Pasternak novel as a general framework.

Shariff, Christie, Steiger, Guinness, Courteney, Richardson, Chaplin--great performers all, and their talents are well-utilized here. Scenery, sets, art direction, sets, costumes, music, action scenes, are at the highest standards.

What I appreciated with the film (and over the years I have had multiple viewings) are some of the little things: the use of trains, over and over, as symbols of change and transition; Zhivago's habit of gazing up, as if to history, for inspiration or understanding; the scene, for example, of Zhivago, in the sleigh going through the darkened streets of Moscow with Tonia, his betrothed, looking up and seeing the patterns on a window of a single candle melting the ice on the glass--and behind it, the bitter recriminations of another betrothed pair, Sascha and Lara, dealing with Lara's nearly forced affair with the grasping Komerovsky.

The cinematographer's choices are wonderful: the scene of Yuri's dead mother in her coffin, as Yuri the child imagines her; the shot of Lara through the veil that Komerovsky adorns her with; the focus on Lara's eyes as she spots a man she long ago fell in love with but never thought she see again.

Some of the user comments here seem to condemn the film for Zhivago's infidelity, but the film doesn't exactly approve of it either--it just recognizes that sometimes a married person falls in love with someone else, and, under some circumstances, acts on it.

Visually, historically, and narratively, this is a film of achievement and wonder. Its romanticism may have aged a bit, as has some of its techniques, but an enormous amount of thought and art went into its making, and it deserves its classic status.

This is a truly breath-taking historical-adventure movie, with strong direction and truly fine casting and performances. Madeline Stowe is particularly forceful and appealing as Cora, and Wes Studi is terrifying as the hate-filled Magua. The location shooting, the theme of the New World casting off Old World repressive institutions and beliefs, the action sequences--work with the elements to make this picture shine.

But why wasn't this musical score even nominated for an Academy Award? Not only is it beautiful in its own right, but it is a perfect overlay for both the high adventure and high romance shown on the screen, and the movie would be severely diminished with an average score.

One of the interesting footnotes to this New York-based show from the 1950s was that it became a sort of refuge for blacklisted scriptwriters. Walter Bernstein and Abe Polonsky are mentioned in the extended IMDb credits as "uncredited" writers. Some of the Hollywood blacklist histories mention this series as employing blacklisted writers.

I think it was Polonsky (whose FORCE OF EVIL is arguably one of the best of the film noirs) who talked about his "You Are There" experiences at a panel I attended in Berkeley in 1980. He stated that many of the historical episodes covered in the series were about the suppression of dissidents (such as The Death of Socrates), mirroring what the leftist screenwriters felt about being blacklisted from their industry on the basis of their political beliefs and affiliations.

I watched "You Are There" occasionally as a kid growing up in the 1950s, and of course I had no sense of this context. I remember thinking the shows were interesting--but corny. But I cannot compare the effort to penetrate historical events with anything currently on commercial broadcast network TV, and the CBS effort behind "You Are There" was a laudable one, in a different age.