Doctor Zhivago

Year:  1965

Director:  David Lean

Screenplay:  Robert Bolt, based on the novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Starring:  Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Tom Courtenay, Alec Guinness, Rita Tushingham, Siobhán McKenna, Ralph Richardson

Running Time:  193 minutes, 200 minutes (1992 re-release)

Genre:  Period drama, epic

Against the backdrop of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, married doctor and controversial poet Yuri Zhivago (Sharif) falls in love with seamstresses daughter Lara (Christie), but their romance is threatened by the momentous historical events taking place around them.

This is probably one of the best known films of all time.  Even if you have never seen Doctor Zhivago, you probably have heard of it before.  This is real epic filmmaking, in scope and certainly in length.  British director David Lean had previously directed such popular epics as The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and he was a master of beautiful, widescreen spectacle.  Moving from cramped, dingy flats, to partial restaurants and grand houses, to gorgeous vistas of snowy fields and forests, the film is always beautiful to look at, and it really needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible, because watching it on television, even a big one, means that some of the impact is lost.  Lean is also good at choreographing the frequent surging crowd scenes, riots and cavalry charges, as well as finding some quiet poetry in the images of nature, and the spectacular sequence in a house that looks as if it is made of ice, it's so frozen.  Incidentally, the novel by Boris Pasternak was banned in the Soviet Union, and so the film could not be shot there, instead it was largely filmed in Spain.  There are some impressive performances: Omar Sharif as the brooding Doctor Zhivago; Julie Christie in her star making role as Lara; Geraldine Chaplin is quite underused as Zhivago's wife, Tonya; Rod Steiger plays the repulsive Komarovsky who wants to seduce Lara; Tom Courtenay is good as Lara's idealistic husband Pasha, who is devoted to the revolution; Alec Guinness plays Zhivago's conflicted half-brother; and Rita Tushingham bookends the film as the woman Guinness is convinced is his niece.  Also in the eclectic cast is notorious Werner Herzog regular Klaus Kinski.  Despite it's reputation as a romance, the love story is the backbone of the narrative but the romantic scenes are surprisingly brief.  The fact that a largely British cast are playing Russian characters strikes a bit of a false note, just due to the accents.  Also the story hinges a lot on coincidence, when people just happen to run into each other which doesn't seem very realistic when Russia is quite a big place.  These are small criticisms though, because this is a great film.  It belongs to a period of epic filmmaking which I don't think exists anymore, for the most part marrying spectacle to real human drama.  Despite it's length, it moves at a lively pace and it is never dull.  It also features a memorable score by Maurice Jarre.  It is one of those films that you definitely need to see at some point, particularly if you ever get the chance to see it in a cinema.

Julie Christie and Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago

Fahrenheit 451

Year: 1966
Director: Francois Truffaut
Screenplay: Jean-Louis Ricard and Francois Truffaut, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury
Starring: Oskar Werner, Julie Christie, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring
Running Time: 112 minutes
Genre: Science-fiction, satire, drama

Summary: In the near future, reading is highly illegal and all books are banned, on the grounds that they "make people unhappy", and firemen are employed not to fight fires (all homes are fireproofed) but to find and burn illicit stashes of literature. The populace are kept docile by pills and endless bland, interactive television, as well as magazines containing dull pictures and no words. Montag (Werner) is a fireman who lives with his wife Linda (Christie), who wants nothing more than a second wall-mounted TV screen. One day, Montag meets a strange young woman named Clarisse (Christie again) who asks him whether he has actually read any of the books that he burns. Out of curiosity, Montag smuggles a novel home and begins to read, soon finding himself hooked on the joys of literature, and questioning all the ideals and convictions by which he has lived his life.

Opinions: The idea of Francois Truffaut, one of the leading lights of the New Wave movement in French cinema, filiming one of the works of science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury is an intriguing one, and Fahrenheit 451 is arguably Ray Bradbury's best novel and is definitely a modern classic. However this is not one of Truffaut's best films. Bradbury is not an easy author to adapt to another medium, his poetic turn of phrase while reading well on the page tends to sound unconvincing when spoken. Also this was Truffaut's first and only English language movie, and he claimed it was his "saddest and most difficult" film-making experience. This was mainly due to his antagonistic relationship with Austrian leading man Oskar Werner, with whom Truffaut had previously worked with on Jules and Jim (1962). Originally Terence Stamp was cast in the lead, but he dropped out because he thought that Julie Christie's dual roles would overshadow him. Werner wanted to play his part as more conventionally heroic, while Truffaut wanted a more hesitant performance. Truffaut thought that Werner's performance was "robotic" and wanted him to play it as if he was just discovering the books for the first time, sniffing at them and wondering what they were, but Werner commented that since it was a science-fiction film he should play it as a robot. Werner gives a very stiff performance and it's very obvious that he is uncomfortable with the English-language dialogue. By the end of shooting Truffaut and Werner were not speaking to each other, and Werner had his hair cut before shooting his final scenes in order to create a deliberate continuity error. Julie Christie does fairly well with her two roles, having long hair as the sedated Linda Montag and sporting a fetching pixie cut as Clarisse, who provides much of the film's heart. Cyril Cusack also does well as the slimy Fire Chief, Montag's boss.
The future world of the film was shot on location in Britain, which viewed today makes it look a very old-fashioned future. The production is very much a product of it's time, and does look and feel inescapably late sixites. The director of photography, incidentally, was Nicolas Roeg who went on to become a noted director in his own right. However the film has many evocative images and some elements work very well. For example the opening credits are spoken rather than appearing as on-screen text, helping to introduce a world without the written word.
Look out for copies of the novel Fahrenheit 451 as well as Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and an issue of Cahiers du Cinema, the influential magazine which Truffaut used to write for, among the burning books.
The adaptation is fairly faithful, although Truffaut was unhappy with what he felt was the stilted and unnatural English dialogue and preferred the French dubbed version. However most of the film's dialogue problems are more to do with the source material. It's no masterpiece but contaisn enough interesting stuff to make it worth checking out.
The title, incidentally, refers to the temperature at which apparently book paper catches fire and burns, although in reality it is 340 degrees Centigrade (842 degrees Fahrenheit).



Cyril Cusack and Oskar Werner in Fahrenheit 451