Omar Sharif

Julie Christie

Geraldine Chaplin

Rod Steiger

Alec Guinness

Tom Courtenay

Siobhán McKenna

Ralph Richardson

Rita Tushingham

Adrienne Corri

Bernard Kay

Geoffrey Keen

Klaus Kinski

Jeffrey Rockland

Gérard Tichy

Noel Willman

Tarek Sharif

Jack MacGowran

Mark Eden

Erik Chitty

Roger Maxwell

Wolf Frees

Gwen Nelson

Lucy Westmore

Lili Muráti

Peter Madden

Luana Alcañiz

Emilio Carrer

José María Caffarel

Catherine Ellison

Víctor Israel

Inigo Jackson

Leo Lähteenmäki

María Martín

José Nieto

Ricardo Palacios

Ingrid Pitt

Robert Rietti

Virgílio Teixeira

María Vico

Pilar Gómez Ferrer

Aldo Sambrell

David Lean

Dario Simoni

Norman Savage

Eddie Fowlie

Terence Marsh

Maurice Jarre

Phyllis Dalton

Robert Bolt

Irene Howard

Boris Pasternak

Arvid Griffen

John Box

Gil Parrondo

Carlo Ponti

Freddie Young

William Steinkamp

Anna Cristofani

José María Ochoa

Mario Van Riel

Roy Stevens

Tadeo Villalba

John Palmer

Stanley Goldsmith

Grazia De Rossi

Douglas Twiddy

John Grover

Robert Bain

Leo Arnaud

Alex Thomson

Andrew Mollo

Lee Turner

Ernest Day

Michael Stevenson

Van Allen James

Mickey Lennon

Kenneth J. Withers

Pedro Vidal

Barbara Cole 

Miguel Sancho

Paddy Cunningham

Ernest Archer

Winston Ryder

Roy Walker

Hugh Miller

Gus Walker

Manuel Berenguer

William Hutchinson

Roy Rossotti

Fred Bennett

Agustín Pastor

Drama

Romance

Doctor Zhivago

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios

Carlo Ponti Production

Italy

United Kingdom

United States of America

CinemaSerf

David Lean has assembled an excellent cast and together with Maurice Jarre's memorable score and some sweeping cinematography from Freddie Young does considerable justice to the lengthy Pasternak tale of "Yuri" - a Russian physician (Omar Sharif). Alec Guinness, now a General in the Soviet army, takes on the mantle of narrator - using the expertly innocent Rita Tushingham as the conduit for the flashbacks - and gradually we discover that it's all a bit internecine at the start. "Yuri" falls in love with the enigmatic "Lara" (Julie Christie) who just happens to be the love interest for "Komarovsky" (Rod Steiger) who would sell his own mother, he is certainly cheating on her's. Frustrated on that front, he ends up marrying his own cousin "Tonya" (Geraldine Chaplin) but with the end of the Great war looming and the October Revolution subsequently reducing the country to war-torn chaos, nothing is simple as families are split asunder trying to flee the guns and bullets. It turns out that "Lara" ended up marrying Communist big-wig "Pasha" (Tom Courtenay) but the war put paid to that relationship and when "Yuri" discovers this he wonders what might have been! This is a collection of love stories. Love for people, for their country, for a cause - and Lean manages to weave the complexities of the themes without bogging us down in doctrine or too much brutally. We know all of that is going on, but Robert Bolt's inspired screenplay drip feeds us the politics in an eminently appetising fashion whilst ensuring the human stories prevail. The vast expanses of Russia - especially as seen during their train journeys - are impressive, chilling, and allow us a respite from the constant barrage of dialogue that is usually pretty essential in enabling us to follow the plot. If you ever get the chance to sit for three hours and watch this on big screen then take it. This is cinema at it's more powerful and the sheer logistics of mass participation, mass transportation and glorious photography - without a computer to be had - is certainly worth sitting through as this epic washes over you.