Ian Christie - Doctor Zhivago

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Doctor Zhivago

Ian Christie

Ian Christie 2015

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Images from Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Young Cassidy (Jack Cardiff, 1965), Sextant Films; King and Country (Joseph Losey, 1964), B.H.E. Productions; Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946), Independent Producers; War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956),

Ponti-De Laurentiis; Doctor Zhivago (Giacomo Campiotti, 2002), Granada/E-Vision/WGBH; Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002), Lucasfilm Ltd/Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation; Cathy Come Home (Ken Loach, 1966), BBC.

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ISBN 9781844579211

Contents

Acknowledgments

This small book about a large film could not have been written without frequent reference to Kevin Brownlows magnificent 1996 biography of David Lean, itself based on conversations with the director and with many of his associates, and on major collections of documents. It also draws upon my own research for The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design (2008), which was informed by extended conversations with its subject and a number of his colleagues, including Terence Marsh and Phyllis Dalton, both key to the making of Zhivago. The first, invaluable reader of my text was Patsy Nightingale, to whom all thanks for helping it and much else happen.

Particular thanks are due to Phyllis Dalton, Wim Jansen of Movie Ink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Andre Kozovo for permission to reproduce key photographs. Also to Sophia Contento and Philippa Hudson for making possible its rapid production with scrupulous attention to detail.

How Zhivago Happened

Several years ago, I was at a small garden party in North London, and gradually realised that I was sitting close to Julie Christie. What should I do? Pretend not to be aware of who she was, or launch into some appropriate conversation? Not wanting to embarrass the actress, I eventually said something about being fascinated by the colour design of Doctor Zhivago, after recently writing a book about its designer, John Box. Especially the blaze of yellow that lights up the library where Christies character, Lara, is working when Zhivago rediscovers her after they have been separated by the Revolution. Immediately, Christies face lit up at what seemed to be still a vivid memory, and I felt I had touched a chord that meant something to both of us, far beyond talk about the making of the film or its more obvious reputation. And indeed, that moment was a key image for the films writer, Robert Bolt who imagined an ocean of daffodils for the scene that leads up to this fateful meeting soon after he first agreed to write the script.

I had come back to the film because of my association with the production designer John Box. Having committed to writing a book about his vision of the designers role, I had to take on board the full range of films he had worked on, of which Zhivago was probably the best known, after Lawrence of Arabia (1962). And as with Lawrence, I was conscious of having to overcome the prejudices of youth. During the 1960s and 70s, when film studies was still taking shape as a field of study, polemic played a vital role in defining the new subject. It was as important to declare what you were against in cinema as what you were championing. And David Leans epics Lawrence and Zhivago came high among the targets of cinephile contempt. During the years I spent arguing for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburgers then little-known work, Lean also stood as a baleful comparison, with his seemingly overblown triumph, at a time when neither of his former mentors could get their own projects off the ground.

By the time I came to know John Box, I had developed a high regard for Leans films of the 1940s and 50s, especially his skilfully modernised, and very English, family melodramas, from