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Just visited the GREAT chat with Patricia Zentilli and Louise Wischermann in #sadgeezer and instead of going back to bed and nursing my sniffles, I watched Dr. Zhivago while cuddling up to Newkate.
It’s a great film, really inspiring and ….. well, it’s just a ripping yarn!
What gave it that extra bite however was the little titbits that my wife, Newkate (a native Russian) told me. Apparently, Pasternak the author was not able to publish his works (the story was based on his own life) in Russia and it was smuggled out and published in Italy. It later won the Nobel Prize for literature and Pasternak refused to accept his prize because the Communists said that if he left Russia to accept it, he wouldn’t be allowed back!
It was the first time that Newkate had seen the film and she liked it. She told me that he parents had an illegal copy of the book when she was a child and it was so terribly illegal that they never kept the book at home.
It wasn’t until 1988 that the book was allowed into Russia and wasn’t published in Russian until 1992.
The film is one of the all time great films and yet it was watchable (from my point of view at least) because it was a love story and not propaganda (it was made in the middle of the cold war (1965)). It was such a shame that Russians (such great lovers of fine literature and poetry – Dostoyevski and Pushkin) could not appreciate, in the same way our parents did, until 30 years after the film was made.
By the way, the illegal copy of Dr Zhivago that Newkates parents had was a 700-page type written copy – it wasn’t a book, someone had typed it all up!!
Wow.
That’s truly a classic in everyway!
My favorite scene is the winter time with the sled swishing to the house. Everything is so silent and frozen, it’s beautiful. Sad, but beautiful. I think I’m gonna have to see it again.
Thanks for the reminder of the classics that are out there…and what people will go through to appreciate them.
I remember that film so well, the first time I went to see it was on my ninth birthday (yes I know it’s odd for a nine year old to to see Dr Zhivago), we actually went to see The Blues Brothers, but we were too young to get in, so mom decided that Dr Zhivago was a good alternative.
But even at 9 I found that film mesmorising, and oddly it’s one of the few things I remember of being a child.
Squishy
You and Newkate will be looking forward to the new British miniseries currently in production then Tony – apparently it intends to be more faithful to the book, given the extended treatment. We shall see. Lean’s movie is famous for making Pasternak’s novel a little too lean, and for emasculating a complex narrative in favor of spectacle and a love story. Will be interesting to compare of course.
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You and Newkate will be looking forward to the new British miniseries currently in production then Tony – apparently it intends to be more faithful to the book, given the extended treatment. We shall see. Lean’s movie is famous for making Pasternak’s novel a little too lean, and for emasculating a complex narrative in favor of spectacle and a love story. Will be interesting to compare of course.
I hope they eventually show that in the U.S. I saw Dr. Zhivago the movie when it first came out, and all I can remember these many decades later is some gorgeous scenery and Omar Sharif. And I love most British miniseries (miniserieses?). Bless their hearts, they do like to give you a bit of story with the cleavage and eye candy.
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