Doctor Zhivago is the title of a novel by Boris Pasternak and its various adaptations. The novel was first published in 1957 in Italy (in Russian), thanks to the publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who had smuggled the manuscript out of the USSR.

Description

The story, in all of its forms, describes the life of the fictional Russian physician Yuri Zhivago and deals with love and loss during the turmoil of revolution and war.

Adaptations

Media using the name Doctor Zhivago includes the following:

Doctor Zhivago is a 2002 British television miniseries directed by Giacomo Campiotti and starring Hans Matheson, Keira Knightley and Sam Neill. The teleplay by Andrew Davies is based on the 1957 novel of the same title by Boris Pasternak.

The serial is the second English-language screen adaptation of the book, following the 1965 feature film. It was produced by Granada Television, with co-funding from the American PBS station WGBH Boston and the German company Evision. It was first broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom, beginning on 24 November 2002. In the United States, it aired as part of Masterpiece Theatre on 2 and 9 November 2003.

Plot

Part I

The story begins in Tsarist Russia in the early 1900s and is set primarily against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War of 1918–1921. At its core is Larissa Guishar Antipova, a young woman from Moscow who has a profound effect on three men who become enamored with her.

Victor Komarovsky, an unctuous, wealthy businessman with political connections, is involved in a casual affair with Lara's bourgeois dressmaker mother Amalia, who encourages her teenaged daughter to accept his invitation to dinner in an attempt to retain his financial support of her household. Initially Lara is repelled by the thought, but she finally accepts and eventually uses her sexual power to seduce and ultimately control him.

Doctor Zhivago is a 1965 British-American epic drama–romance film directed by David Lean and starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. It is set in Russia between the years prior to World War I and the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, and is based on the Boris Pasternak novel of the same name. While immensely popular in the West, the book was banned in the Soviet Union for decades. For this reason, the film could not be made in the Soviet Union and was instead filmed mostly in Spain.

Contemporary critics were generally disappointed, complaining of its length at over three hours, and claiming that it trivialized history, but acknowledging the intensity of the romantic drama and the treatment of human themes. Over time, however, the film's reputation has improved greatly. It is now regarded as among Lean's finest films, as well as one of the best films of the epic genre, ranked by the American Film Institute in 1998 as the 39th greatest American film of all time. The film won five Academy Awards, and as of 2016 is the eighth highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation.