Dr. Zhivago (1965/Warner Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B- Extras: B Film: B+
It is
hard to explain the greatness of a film sometimes, especially when its context
has passed, yet David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago
(1965) was a huge hit at the time that was a critical success (if not initial
across the board) about love against the background of a world being torn apart
by war. Rightly compared to Gone With The Wind in that respect, the
war here is a Russian Revolution that finally succeeds and takes a beautiful
past world down with it and much worse.
Based on
Boris Pasternak’s hugely successful book, Omar Sharif is the title character
who eventually became a writer. His most
popular book is based on the love of his life, Laura (Julie Christie) and our
film begins with a scene in the dark bowels of a near-Stalinized Soviet as
Yevgraf (Alec Guinness) watches the workers go from place to place to build the
USSR soullessly into a heartless empire, but he has a quest to find out if one
young lady is the daughter of Zhivago and Laura. In this, we learn of their entire affair and
the stakes of the Revolution in flashback as his pursuit is rather
individualistic and hardly something “The Party” would approve of.
Laura has
to battle with the egotistical, arrogant Komarovsky while being supportive of
Pasha (Tom Courtney) who sees the Revolution as inevitable when no one else
does and keeps getting squeezed in different ways that will slowly, eventually
change her life forever. Yuri Zhivago
has a potential relationship with Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) to consider, plus
the same changes he is aware could happen, plus a younger Yevgraf (also
Guinness) observes in silence, a state the film uses effectively to create
suspense, show the state of the people that will make the overthrow possible
and also be the downfall of a great country.
Ralph Richardson, Siobhan McKenna, Klaus Kinski, Geoffrey Keen, Jack
MacGowran, Adrienne Corri, Bernard Kay and an uncredited Ingrid Pitt also star.
Robert
Bolt returned to write the screenplay for Lean as he had on Laurence Of Arabia, but did not repeat
himself except in that he is a distinct auteur in his plotting and
approach. The film has its melodrama,
but this never becomes a soap opera, especially with the great performances,
the coldness of the world (figuratively and literally) the characters inhabit
and points the film makes against communism, Stalinism and any autocratic
system that despises the individual. It
does this all the way to the ending, which like all great epics, makes the
ultimate grand statement that not only works, but endures. As a matter of fact, despite the end of The
Cold War this film became a hot item in the center of upon its release, that
statement is now as relevant as ever considering recent world history.
The
then-very powerful Soviet Union banned the
film, highly criticized it and especially targeted the love theme from the
film, also known as Lara’s Theme as
too sentimental, petty, capitalistic, individualistic… Well, you get the idea. A dozen years later, it still irritated the
USSR and was used as an alert to summons Barbara Bach’s Russian Superspy as a
music box tune in the pre-title sequence of the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me as another dig
against the Soviets. Worldwide, Lara’s Theme remains one of the most
popular motion picture songs ever made. Dr. Zhivago remains a classic that
deserves to be rediscovered and it arrival on Blu-ray is something to be very
happy about.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot in real anamorphic Panavision 35mm
film by Director of Photography Freddie Young, B.S.C., who along with Lean
originally wanted the Super Panavision 70mm format they used on Laurence Of Arabia, but MGM deemed that
too expensive. It would also be released
in MetroColor, but besides the 70mm blow-ups that were done worldwide, it turns
out that the British market actually had the luxury of three-strip,
dye-transfer Technicolor prints. At its
best, the transfer here looks amazing with great color and detail (if not
always looking like Technicolor) and those used to the film will be stunned by
the depth and detail in the many best scenes here. Director Nicolas Roeg also shot some scenes
when he was still a DP, but he did not stay on the film to share duties with
Young.
Of
course, there are scenes that are purposely near monochrome to show the cold
world of communism and downside of the revolution, but they look good as
well. The downside of the transfer
includes more than a few soft shots, some footage that is simply not as first
generation as the best footage and some cases where the color is not what it
could be, holding back the overall quality.
Wonder if they had one of those British 35mm prints to go with the
original camera materials in the vault?
Otherwise, you can imagine this being blow-up for 70mm and see how the
film has been visually influential since.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix can sound really good, especially
where the Maurice Jarre music score is concerned, but there are limits here
too, some of which should not be so. This
is a film that originally had 6-track magnetic stereo sound at its best in its
70mm blow-ups, which includes five speakers behind the screen for traveling
dialogue, stereo dialogue and sound effects, while a later re-release had DTS
5.1 sound. Here, the stereo dialogue is
still too much in the center channel, that dialogues sounds too low as compared
to the music, the dialogue sounds a little more compressed than it should and
the soundfield of this new mix is awkward as a result.
Yes, the
sound is richer and warmer than any of the previous DVD editions (read Dolby
Digital 5.1, which never did the film justice, as is usually the case with that
old codec), but when most of the James Bond films made at the time (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger,
Thunderball) sound as good or better
than this mix (none of which had 70mm blow-ups or multi-channel sound of the
time) now on Blu-ray sound as good or better, you know something is not correct
about the restoration. The isolated
Jarre music score on a previous DVD edition is also not repeated here in any
format.
Extras
include a bonus CD with 8 tracks from the original soundtrack, an illustrated
booklet on the film built into the DigiPak case, several vintage featurettes, text
on the cast, the terrific hour-long Dr. Zhivago: The Making Of A Russian Epic,
two sets of black & white-filmed interviews (one with Christie, the other
with Sharif), Geraldine Chaplin Screen Test, feature length audio commentary
track by Steiger, Sharif and widow Sandra Lean, Original Theatrical Trailer and
new two-part 45th Anniversary Retrospective – Dr. Zhivago: A Celebration. Most extras are on a DVD, but that is not a
problem, though some may have wished the mostly-filmed materials had been
upgraded to high definition. However,
this is still very nice, deluxe treatment for Dr. Zhivago, but one should only see the extras after seeing the
film.
If you do
not have Blu-ray yet, Warner also offers the film as a 2-DVD set, available
On Demand and For Download on iTunes at:
http://bit.ly/WB_Doctor_Zhivago
- Nicholas Sheffo
