![]() ![]() A real-life conflict between Pasternak, his wife, and his mistress inspired the love triangle that formed the heart of the book. ![]() He began Zhivago after World War II but did not complete it until 1956. Undeterred by censorship, Pasternak continued to write, longing to create a work on a grand scale in the vein of his idol Tolstoy. The reaction of the authorities to Pasternak’s prose was equally dour. ![]() Photo: Jerry Cooke/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images Russian author and Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak, circa 1958. His writing rarely kowtowed to the state’s view of things, however, and by the 1930s, Pasternak’s poetry was not only publicly disparaged by the Soviets but often banned outright. Pasternak became a poet, and for a time, after his first book of poems was published in 1917, he was one of the most famous poets in the Soviet Union. His father was an illustrator who created illustrations for the work of family friend Leo Tolstoy. Its author, Boris Pasternak, was born into a literary environment in Moscow in 1890. The book has a controversial historyīefore it became a film, of course, Doctor Zhivago had been a novel-one with quite an interesting and controversial history. How did this extravagant movie about the Russian Revolution shot during the Cold War and featuring two lesser-known stars come to break box-office records and merit frequent and enthusiastic reappraisal? Take a look at the story behind Doctor Zhivago. Today, most cinema buffs of all stripes would agree that Zhivago is one of the classics of its genre. Audiences flocked to this tale of doomed love set during the Russian Revolution, and although many reviewers were stingy with their praise at the time, critical opinion has since sided with the people who crowded the theaters. Even by the mid-60s, when the Hollywood studio system was beginning to crumble, an epic love story could still command an epic audience.Ĭase in point: Doctor Zhivago, released in 1965, remains one of the Top 10 highest-grossing films of all-time (once totals are adjusted for inflation). Starting with Gone with the Wind, which set the standard for the genre back in 1939, historical romances on a monumental scale were big business for decades. There was a time, however, when it was a moviegoing staple. In today’s era of overstuffed action movies and raunchy comedies, the epic Hollywood love story is mostly a thing of the past. ![]()
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