Doctor Zhivago (Deluxe Edition)

Over three hours in length, this epic story absolutely earned its #39 spot on the AFI top 100 with its beautiful landscapes, fantastic acting, great score, and a storyline which sucks you in and holds you to the end. I've seen this film numerous times and as I grow older it becomes more and more poignant. Sharif is a sensitive poet who is raised by a wealthy family and becomes a doctor. He also is steered into marriage with Chaplin, the sweet girl he grew up with almost as a sister. But it's Christie who captures his passion, and soon he is spending time with both of them. This is all against the chaotic backdrop of the Russian Revolution, as the family's fortunes are pulled away from them piece by piece. The complexity of the characters is one thing that always fascinates me here. Christie's mother is the kept woman of a rich, powerful man, and Christie tries to resist him. But it's not long before she's under his spell and in essence cheating on her mother with him. She lies to her fiance about what is going on as well. But it's hard to blame her, at seventeen, for being drawn in by his seductions. Chaplin is calm, even, doing her best to hold things together as the family disintegrates around her. And through it all, Sharif shines with an idealistic light, trying to hold fast to his ideals, but sometimes being quite blind to the realities of danger that are swirling around him. The landscapes also capture me. This is definitely a movie to see in the highest quality version that you can get your hands on, on a wide screen TV. The gorgeous ice palace glistens in the sun, the onion domes crystalized. The Urals tower over the landscapes. The streets of Moscow go from glittering dinner party to violent attack location to run-down location of starving peasants. There's a strong sense of just how much things change over the years - and how much nature remains the same throughout it all. The world is changing, and yet the wolves still roam the winter plains, hungry for a meal. I absolutely adore the movie. Even so, I always try to be fully objective in my reviews so I do want to point out two issues that, while fairly minor, still should be noted. First, I am half Ukrainian and grew up surrounded by people from Ukraine and Russia. I'm sure that's part of why I love the movie, with its sounds, locations, and storyline. But it has always struck me as odd that the actors are all from places other than this part of the world. The lead character, Sharif, is Egyptian. It is fascinating to me that there were no Russian / Ukrainian / etc. actors. It's not like these actors didn't exist. Kirk Douglas was born "Issur Danielovitch" to parents from Belarus. Many superb actors hail from this part of the world. To me it would be like having a movie about feudal Japan but having all the characters played by Americans, when there are wonderful actors that more naturally fit into the parts. I'll say again that I love the actors they DID use. I'm just curious if they tried to cast "more authentic" people in the roles. Sharif, for example, had to have his eyes taped to fake the look which brings to mind uncomfortable similarities to Mickey Rooney / Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Second, this movie is far better than most in providing a well rounded cast of men and women. So many movies are 99% male with a token female or two. Here we have a wealth of great female roles, from the obvious Chaplin and Christie to the many secondary roles like Christie's mom and Chaplin's mom. But that being said, while there are tons and tons of male-male conversations, the women seem to only exist to talk to the men. Their purpose is to be a male interaction point. They hardly ever talk with each other! I think a Baroness briefly talks with Christie's mom about the man who is keeping her. Chaplin's mom briefly talks with her about how handsome Sharif is. So the tiny few times a woman talks with another woman, it's to add details about a man. That's it. It is just so eye opening to look at fantastic movies that have superb female leads and then to see what dialogue they're given. Then compare that with what the men have available. Again I want to say that I love the actresses here, and have the highest respect for them. That's part of my point - that the men in the movie have all sort of opportunity to engage in great dialogue. But the women, just because they're women, have a far narrower range of opportunities given to them. The novel offers incredibly powerful female-female scenes, but they're all stripped out here. An absolute must-see and must-own. You'll want to watch it as the years go by, and see just how much more you get out of it each time.

In addition to what the headline says, the acting in this movie is unsurpassed and I'm sure that every main actor in this incredible movie rates their performance therein as the hallmark of their acting career. This is the fifth time I have seen this movie. I am....quite old: as a teenager I watched it four times having fallen in love with Julie Christie's "Lara". Both as an actress and in her role as "Lara", Julie Christie remains the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I've lived a long life, been married four times, and I still burn with lust and passion for the Julie Christie of Lara. So now I've seen it again after fifty some-odd years and I would still pay a king's ransom for just one month locked in a room at a Best Western motel with Lara. I would give 20 years off my life (ooops! that option doesn't exist!) for such an antic. But aside from all my lust for Lara. This movie is a highly interesting peek at what the early days of the Soviet Union must have been like. And, as mentioned above, there are innumerable scenes of indescribably beauty in this movie. The underlying danger and menace inherent to life in a newly-born Communist state is clearly shown but there are only a few minutes in the movie that show violence. It cannot possibly be classified as a violent movie and I'd allow any child over twelve to see this. If you are a lover of cinematographic beauty and/or photography this movie is a MUST SEE. 99% of the movie was filmed in Spain (believe it or not!) and that would include Varykino which was filmed in the Spanish town of Soria. Other winter scenes were filmed in Finland and Canada, but the extent of winter scene shots actually done in Spain is astonishing and they include the crossing of the vast frozen lake by the partisans. The "ice palace" of Varykino was shot in Soria, Spain. Enjoy!! P.S. No longer the young buck I was when this first movie came out and I salivated over Julie Christie as Lara, I did find certain scenes unbearably corny, so much so that I burst out laughing when Dr. Zhivago got up in the middle of the night in the ice castle and went over to the desk and, amidst heavily romantic musical scoring, set his pen down on paper and wrote "Lara", the title of his poem as well as the movie. The corn was flying! I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to die! Here's some upper-middle class doctor with a perfectly sweet and beautiful wife and daughter back in Moscow holed up in some igloo with this hot blonde writing a poem about her while his poor wife and child are missing him and suffering!! Is that good? NO!!! No "MISTER NICE GUY" award for him! Still...igloo or Best Western it is still Julie Christie!!! And who could blame him? Certainly not me. Watch this movie!! You will not be disappointed. If I could give it six stars I would.

Great movie and no issues would get again

Very good Blu-ray disc received of one of the greatest epics of all time: Doctor Zhivago.

This a classic of all times. Beautiful scenery, awesome acting, and realistic story telling. A must see. I can't tell you how many times I have seen this movie.

David Lean's cinema classic is presented in a new digital, 45th anniversary DVD set with digitally enhanced sound and color so rich and saturated it virtually leaps off the screen. Repeated viewing allows one to dissect Lean's filmmaking technique and appreciate how well he maintained the texture of verismo throughout this 200-minute screen epic. But gritty realism is not its only virtue. Zhivago is both a physician AND a poet. Even more than in Lean's other features, this is visual poetry for the screen, with montages of stunning imagery that set the tone and feeling of the story. Most compelling are the closeups of the actors in the film's core: the love triangle between Zhivago (Omar Sharif), his wife Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin), and the beautiful Lara (Julie Christie). Lean draws compelling performances from the cast, leading to fine ensemble acting and believable moral tension. The sensual adulterous love affair between Zhivago and Lara contrasts with the violent background of the Russian Revolution against which it plays out. But it is the sweep of history that is the real subject of Pastenak's novel, and of the movie. The characters are mere pawns of forces beyond their control. Even the sadistic Commander Strelnikov, who at one point holds Zhivago's live in the balance, finds himself disowned by the Party he has served and, in the end, crawls back to his long-estranged wife Lara in search of comfort and safety. Personifying a new generation that barely remembers the Revolution, young Tonya Komarovskaya -- daughter of Zhivago by Lara -- refuses to believe she has any connection with the great poet and his celebrated lover. Tonya has her own life and her own business to attend to in a new, industrialized USSR. She consciously turns her back on the brutal, violent past, just as the Party denies its monstrous crimes against humanity, positing an improved standard of living and status as a great power in justification for its secrecy and prison gulag. The movie's shortcomings are painfully evident here: the 1960s hairstyles and fashions thinly adapted to the 19-teens setting; the overly obvious makeup of some characters; the obtrusive voice-over exposition (a common device in many Lean films), reducing the pace to a plod compared to today's action-adventure features; the serially sparking broomstick on the trolley. But these defects are subsumed in the fine plotting and story development, supported by meticulous historical accuracy. Or, if not accuracy, attention to myriad details which together weave a tapestry of period believability. As always in the Lean films, the steam trains are beautifully photographed. The train journey from Moscow to the Urals rates as one of the greatest railway odysseys in film history. The scene of the demonstration being sabred down by mounted Cossacks in the streets of the capital; the montage of Red partisan fighters in the Civil War; the scene of Russian deserters confronting replacement troops on a deserted country road; and the sequence showing desperate survivors of one of Strelnikov's raids running after the train -- all these are even more vivid and memorable on the DVD issue than the previous VHS releases. Although close inspection reveals how carefully choreographed these scenes were, you will not even notice if you allow yourself to be swept up in the human pathos of the story and its masterful, deliberate unfolding at the hands of Lean et al. The needle-sharp cinematography is well rendered (although nothing could equal the full Cinemascope lushness of the original theatrical release), enabling the viewer to appreciate the fine detail of the Moscow-in-winter set and the frozen beauty of the Varykino estate with its onion-domed house filled with snowdrifts and icicles, laboriously sculpted in beeswax for the production. An hour-long documentary on The Making Of is included on a second DVD, merely a color-corrected version of the one used in the original VHS release. The making of the film was an unusually complex operation with locations all over Europe and Canada, and the documentary is interesting to watch once or twice. However, it is of its kind and not a compelling reason to buy the set. Whatever its shortcomings -- and they are integral to Lean's style of filmmaking and the times HE was shooting in --, this is a moving and delightful film, and rates as a great entertainment value.

Have had this movie for awhile now. Have re-watched a few times. Best movie - and theme song, ever.

GREAT FILM--SETTINGS WERE SPECIAL---CLEAN FILM BEFORE THE BAD GUYS TOOK OVER HOLLYWOOD---u know who they are

昔テレビで2回観ました。 あらためて観て感動。 ラストシーンの意味も考えさせられ大満足でした。

Es gibt Filme die man vom Namen nach fast ein Leben lang kennt, aber nie gesehen hat. Oftmals ist es ein Ruf der ihm begleitend vorauseilt, oder auch ein Bild das man sich davon unterbewußt in den Kopf gesetzt hat, das einen davon abhält. In diesem Fall war es ein zweifelhafter. Schmonzette und triefige Liebesschnulze hat man oft von Wegbegleitern verächtlich gehört. Bei solchen Urteilen hinterfragt man nach der Sichtung, ob diese Personen den Film wirklich gesehen haben. Ich glaube eher nicht. David Lean hat 1965 ein absolutes Meisterwerk geschaffen, was mir leider erst heute bewußt wurde. Durch das eingangs erwähnte Negativbild, habe ich den Film immer unbeachtet gelassen und wollte ihn nicht sehen. Störend in meiner ablehnenden Haltung war eigentlich immer nur der Name des Regisseurs, da er immerhin auch "Die Brücke am Kwai" und "Lawrence von Arabien" geschaffen hat. Also musste irgendwann zwangsläufig doch noch eine Sichtung erfolgen und ich bin froh endlich diesen Schritt gewagt zu haben. Der Film konzentriert sich auf die Wirren der russischen Revolution und wie sie aus den Augen von verschiedenen Beteiligten erlebt wird. Natürlich ist auch die erwartete Liebesgeschichte zu sehen, aber eben nicht alleine und vor allem niemals schmierig. Eher subtil und im Kontext absolut notwendig. Die Liebenden geben dem Zuschauer Hoffnung in einer eiskalten und brutalen Zeit. Die Revolution war kein Zuckerschlecken und man merkt auch deutlich den Irrsinn der dahintersteht. Täter werden zu Opfern und die Opfer werden hinterher zu den Tätern, die sie vorher verabscheut haben. Die gleichen Taten nur mit einer anderen Ideologie im Hinterkopf. Alles andere als eine "Heile-Welt-Seifenoper", für die ich den Film fälschlicherweise immer gehalten habe. Die Regie von David Lean ist einfach fantastisch. Die Größe der Panoramabilder ist sensationell und auch die Settings sowie die Bildsprache phänomenal. Die Entjungferung einer 17 jährigen, als Blutspuren der niedergeschlagenen Revolution im strahlend weißen Schnee darzustellen, hat schon was geniales. Genauso wie die Symbolik von Blumen oder anderen Details. Eine Kunst die auch Hitchcock gerne verwendete. Oder auch die sensationellen Kamerafahrten außerhalb des Fensters, während er die Szenerie innen dem Zuschauer überläßt. Er liefert zwar die Bilder, aber die Dialoge soll man sich an manchen Stellen besser denken. Apropos Dialoge! Das die brillant sind ist klar, aber ein Gespräch zwischen Alec Guiness und Omar Sharif ist dermaßen fulminant gefilmt, das ich sprachlos im Sessel verharrte. Man sieht zwar den Dialog, aber hört nur die Aussagen von Sharif, während Guiness seine eigenen Worte mit einer Stimme aus dem Off übertönt. Er erzählt, was er dort gesagt hat, analysiert es und gibt direkt Auskunft wie er darüber dachte, während er sprach. Phänomenale Idee! Wie auch der rabenschwarze Bildschirm nach der Intermission und dem Licht am Ende des Tunnels! Das einzige Problem am Film ist seine Laufzeit! Nicht was man jetzt denkt, er ist zu kurz! Erstens konnte ich mich an den wahnsinnigen Bildern nicht sattsehen und zweitens hätte ich so viel mehr über verschiedene Personen gewußt. Unbedingt muss man auch die weltbekannte Musik von Maurice Jarre erwähnen. Die ist ebenfalls perfekt in die jeweilige Szene verarbeitet und spielt mit den Emotionen des Zuschauers. Am wunderbarsten zu hören, während Schiwago Gedichte schreibt, "Lara`s Theme" beginnt und er seinen Entwurf zerknüllt und wegwirft. Die Musik ebbt sofort ab, wird eher dramatisch und als er weiterschreibt beginnt das Thema von vorne. Großartig! Wahre Filmkunst! Auch die Darsteller sind eine wahre Pracht und bis in die kleinste Nebenrolle perfekt besetzt. Sogar Klaus Kinski gibt sich die Ehre. Omar Sharif glänzt zurückhaltend und unaufdringlich, aber mit einer unglaublichen Wucht an Ausstrahlung. Alec Guiness verfügt selbstverständlich ebenfalls über eine erhabene Leinwandpräsenz, das es einem die Schuhe auszieht. Besonders als er zum ersten Mal seinem Halbbruder begegnet. Julie Christie ist nicht einfach nur wunderschön, die Aussagekraft ihrer Augen passt perfekt zur jeweiligen Situation. Zwei Dinge sind aber noch unbedingt zu erwähnen. Erstmal den Mut des Regisseurs ein russisches Thema mitten im Höhepunkt des kalten Krieges zu wählen. Der amerikanische Hass auf Russland dürfte in dieser Zeit nicht gerade klein gewesen sein und dennoch urteilt der Film in keinster Weise und schert alles über einen Kamm. Genauso gibt er seinen Protagonisten freien Lauf und läßt sie Dinge tun, mit denen man nicht immer einverstanden ist, ohne sie zu verurteilen. Sie dürfen lebendig wirken, ohne das der Film bestimmt wie man über sie zu denken hat. Der Zuschauer wird in keinster Weise bevormundet. Top! Für mich ein absolutes Meisterwerk, auf das ich wegen der eigenen falschen Vorstellungskraft viel zu lange verzichtet habe. Einen Vergleich zwischen der DVD und der BD kann ich leider nicht anbieten. Meine Erstsichtung kam nämlich von der BD, die mir aber sehr gut gefallen hat. Die Bildqualität ist für einen Film dieses Alters hervorragend. Natürlich nicht mit neuen Hollywood Blockbustern zu vergleichen, aber das ist auch der Film nicht. Da ziehen die Neuen nämlich den Kürzeren:-)) Der Ton klingt einwandfrei! Ich habe ihn allerdings nur mit der deutschen Tonspur gesehen, weshalb ich die anderen nicht bewerten kann. Er ist aber sehr klar und ohne Defekte. Räumlichkeit durch die hinteren Lautsprecher, ist zwar kaum gegeben aber dafür klingt die Musik absolut dynamisch und brillant. Mit dem Bonusmaterial werde ich mich aber erst nach der Zweitsichtung beschäftigen.

alles ok.

Fantastic Epic Film

言わずと知れた名作映画です。最も気に入っている映画の一つで、これまでもNHK-BSで放送されたものを録画して、折に触れて楽しんできましたが、今回、試しにこのパッケージ・ソフトを購入してみました。 最近NHK-BSで放送されたものも、2.3Mbpsと、放送の最高ビットレートで送られてきているので、デジタルコンテンツの品質として決して悪いわけではないはずですが、比較してみると、やはりこのパッケージ・ソフトの方が、全体的にカラーリングが良く、音声もしっかりしていると感じました。 自分は、映画を鑑賞する時には、作品そのものを楽しむタイプで、マニアライクに画像や音声を分析するようなことはしていませんが、こうして比較してみると、最も気に入っている作品群を、より好条件で鑑賞するのも悪くないな、と感じた次第です。詳しいことは判りませんが、恐らくコンテンツとしての情報量と規格の差だと推測します。 なお、この作品の4K Ultra HDソフト版は観ていませんが、最近買い換えた4KTVでこの商品を観てみると、4Kアップコンバート機能がかなり優秀で、こうした優良なパッケージ・ソフトを使えば、より有利に機能が働き、そこそこ4K Ultra HDソフトに肉薄できているような気がします。 もちろん最近のデジタル映画のように「クッキリ鮮やか」というわけではありませんが、カラーリング、コントラストともに充分で、制作当時のフィルム映画の雰囲気をしっかり甦らせてくれました。暗い夜のシーン、広々とした大自然の中のシーン、それぞれ見事ですし、人の表情も大変リアルに感じさせてくれました。 最初、ちょっとテストのつもりで見始めたのですが、美しい映像に驚き、ついつい全編を鑑賞する羽目になったほどです。今回、この商品をあえて購入した甲斐がありました。