Doctor Zhivago (1965) on Netflix
PG-1319653h 20mDramaRomanceWar
Yuri Zhivago, a Moscow physician and poet, is engaged to Tonya Gromeko. Serving as a battlefield doctor in World War I, he meets Lara Antipova, a nurse searching for her missing husband.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.9/1088,064 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
The orphaned Yuri Zhivago is raised in Moscow by family friends Alexander and Anna Gromeko, and grows up to be a physician and a poet. He becomes engaged to their daughter Tonya. In the same city, seventeen-year-old Lara Antipova is drawn into a relationship with Viktor Komarovsky, a well-connected older friend of her mother, while Pasha Antipov, who hopes to marry her, is hurt when mounted police break up a peaceful demonstration; Lara tends his injury. When World War I begins, Yuri serves as a battlefield doctor, and Pasha joins the army and is reported missing. Lara takes work as a nurse to look for him, and at a field hospital she and Yuri serve together for six months.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Hungarian actress Lili Muráti slipped clambering onto a moving train and fell under the wagon, but escaped serious injury and was back at work within three weeks, and David Lean appears to have used part of her accident in the final cut.
- David Lean's team hit Spain's warmest winter in 50 years, so some scenes were shot in interiors with artificial snow made from dust from a nearby marble quarry.
- The Varykino ice palace in Soria was a house filled with frozen beeswax, and the partisans' charge across a frozen lake was staged on a cast iron sheet laid over a dried river-bed and covered in fake snow, mostly marble dust.
- Nicolas Roeg was the original director of photography and worked on some scenes, but he left after an argument with David Lean and was replaced by Freddie Young.
- Peter O'Toole, star of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, was the director's original choice for Zhivago but turned the part down; Max von Sydow and Paul Newman were also considered, and Rod Taylor turned it down too.
- Omar Sharif loved the novel and asked to be cast as Pasha, a part that went to Tom Courtenay, and was surprised when David Lean instead suggested he play Zhivago.
- David Lean convinced producer Carlo Ponti that Sophia Loren was not right for Lara, saying she was too tall, and Jeanne Moreau, Yvette Mimieux, Sarah Miles and Jane Fonda were considered before Julie Christie was cast for her appearance in Billy Liar.
- Doctor Zhivago is the most popular film of all time in Italy with 22.9 million admissions, and also the most popular film of all time in Switzerland with over a million admissions.
