WATCH PARTY: Doctor Zhivago PART 1 (1965) David Lean @ Jordan Newby Library

A grand epic of love and revolution, from the director of Laurence of Arabia and Bridge Over the River Kwai. Based on the novel by Boris Pasternak.

This is PART 1 and take note -- this one is at Jordan Newby Library (in contrast to Part 2, which is at Richard Tucker Library the following night.)

RUNTIME: 200 minutes (we'll have about half each session)

SYNOPSIS: During the Russian Revolution, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif), is a young doctor who has been raised by his aunt and uncle following his father's suicide. Yuri falls in love with beautiful Lara Guishar (Julie Christie), who has been having an affair with her mother's lover, Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), an unscrupulous businessman. Yuri, however, ends up marrying his cousin, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin). But when he and Lara meet again years later, the spark of love reignites.

BLURBS:
"Despite the grim and brooding background, Zhivago has a surging buoyant spirit that is unquenchable. Doctor Zhivago is more than a masterful motion picture; it is a life experience." - James Powers, The Hollywood Reporter

"The movie is something that should be experienced by everyone at least once in a lifetime." - Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

"Doctor Zhivago believes that history should have a lot of room for personal feelings – that the problems of its little people do amount to more than a hill of beans – and that’s perhaps why the Russians didn’t like Pasternak: He argued for the individual over the state, the heart over the mind." - Roger Ebert