Trama

After a short biography of author Boris Pasternak, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the filming of Doctor Zhivago (1965).

A new film is being made based on Boris Pasternak's epic novel Doctor Zhivago (1965), the book which was banned in his home country. The novel became more widely known when in October 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for the book. He, however, was not present at the award's ceremony, as the Soviet authorities would not allow it. Pasternak needed to smuggle the manuscript, based on his own recollections of the Russian Revolution, out of the Soviet Union to Italy to get published. Producer Carlo Ponti and MGM Studio head Robert H. O'Brien were interested in making a movie of the book, and enlisted the services of acclaimed director David Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt. Spain and Finland would fill in for the Russian locales where they could not film. The most elaborate set was a 10 acre recreation of Moscow in the Spanish plains. Among the movie stars are Omar Sharif as the title character, screen newcomer Geraldine Chaplin - daughter of Charles Chaplin - as Zhivago's childhood sweetheart Tonya, Julie Christie as Lara, Zhivago's great love, Alec Guinness as Zhivago's mysterious half-brother Yevgraf, Rod Steiger as the opportunistic Komarovsky, and Tom Courtney as the idealistic student Pasha. The movie juxtaposes the epic scale of the revolution against the intimacy of human love, they which play on two very different but equally strong human emotions.—Huggo