A Few Words About A few words about...™ Dr. Zhivago -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[24fpssean]

Yeah but not every film a director makes is going to be a masterpiece, in fact only a small handful of films a director makes are worthy masterpieces, some more than others. For Schickle and Kael to confront (no other word suffices) Lean about RD was hurtful, unhelpful and hypocritical - after all, he didn't make movies specifically for them. RD is overblown and perhaps self-indulgent, but not without its merits. For two critics to take it upon themselves to try to cure a director of Lean's caliber... well, it's history now anyway. On the other hand, when you make a film that is to be seen by millions, you have to expect a certain amount of vitriolic feedback. Lean had had plenty with Zhivago and the outraged cries of anti-semitism over Oliver Twist should have prepared him for anything he ever did.


Speaking of Kael, James Ivory was always amused by how much she hated his movies.

 

[marsnkc]

Compare Schickel's and Kael's confrontation with Bosley Crowther's infamous criticism of 'Lawrence' in the New York Times (available online)! The former were at least part of a group gathered to honor the maker of this masterpiece while the latter's 'review' (because that's all it was - not a scholarly assessment of an epic FILM) dripped of sarcasm and cynicism. It's interesting to read peoples' current comments to this article, one saying that rottentomatoes.com could find only one negative review of the film, that being Crowther's. Another said that Crowther probably had to eat his words for decades afterwards.


As the old sawhorse goes: Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach (to which I would add: become 'critics').

 

[Douglas Monce]

Lean was so shaken by the savaging of RD (particularly by Kael) that he didn't make another film for 14 years.


Schickle was more often than not, very kind to filmmakers if not their films. His reviews are rarely personal. He often gets interviews with filmmakers such as Hitchcock, Spielberg and Lucas for his documentaries. I don't know that they would participate if they didn't respect his work


Kael on the other had was just vicious in her attacks on films and filmmakers, so much so that Lucas named a villain after her. I found her reviews for the most part to be intellectually bankrupt. Unlike Schickle she had no real understanding of filmmaking, unfortunately she THOUGHT that she did. She was just another flunky with an opinion. Of course thats just my opinion so take it for what its worth.


Doug

 

[24fpssean]

No, I think you're right, Doug. Kael was pretty bad in her attacks. Schickle really liked A Passage to India, or so I've read, and Kael even admitted that the characters "do live." Perhaps they felt bad, perhaps not. Any film, no matter what an amazing classic/masterpiece/epiphany it is considered by most to be, will have detractors. Lawrence can indeed be picked apart, on an historical level, and certainly if one isn't in the mood to spend four hours in the desert with a quivering verge of a nervous breakdown Peter O'Toole. If a critic, or worse an audience, fail to immerse into the universe a director has created, for whatever reasons of their own, it is fatal. Shawshank Redemption faired poorly until people began to watch it on home video, where it seemed to reveal itself and become a cult classic.

 

[marsnkc]

Originally Posted by Douglas Monce

No, I think you're right, Doug. Kael was pretty bad in her attacks. Schickle really liked A Passage to India, or so I've read, and Kael even admitted that the characters "do live." Perhaps they felt bad, perhaps not.

Shawshank Redemption faired poorly until people began to watch it on home video, where it seemed to reveal itself and become a cult classic.

Schickel wrote the David Lean/Passage to India cover story for Time (I think I still have it), heralding the 'return of a master'. After Lean's death, he said that the article was written partly as an apology for the Algonquin incident.


Re Shawshank on home video. It's amazing how many movies that I literally hated watching in a cinema that later became huge favorites for me on home video. Mood, comfort level and other factors of course play into it. Like Shawshank, some movies develop a cult following once they get to video (wasn't this the case with Blade Runner?)

 

[Douglas Monce]

Originally Posted by marsnkc


You're right that Lean was working on Mutiny on the Bounty. After that project fell through he was also working on Nostromo with Spielberg as producer. He was also toying for some time with making Empire of the Sun. Some people believe that all of these films never got made under his direction, because of his fear of failure and that he would set himself up to fail. How much of that is true and how much is hogwash is anyone's guess.


Blade Runner very much a flop on its original release. I saw it opening day and loved it, but that was the summer of E.T. and Star Trek 2, and downer films like Blade Runner and The Thing didn't stand a chance. Of course both films have gone on to be very successful on home video.


Doug

 

[Robert Harris]

The screenplay of Captain Bligh, which runs 163 pages, is both epic and brilliant - a Lean project in every way. Reading the draft, one can easily visualize the shots and hear the music score. One image that stays with me regards the ship making its way in freezing weather, and then encapsulated in ice exits a fog bank and becomes visible to us.

 

[John Hodson]

It was, initially at least, to be two films of course. - the BFI has some interesting if limited production info on-line.

 

[BethHarrison]

I'm still waiting for someone to make a film about Captain Bligh's years as Governor of New South Wales. He was sent to Australia in disgrace, and basically just spent his time being a professional drunkard ribbon cutter who was paid 2000 pounds a year for his troubles. The current Premier of Queensland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Bligh is related to the Captain Bligh.

 

[John Hodson]

Sounds like the ideal project for Sir Les Patterson.

 

[marsnkc]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris

Sounds like the ideal project for Sir Les Patterson.

...or Dame Edna!

 

[AdrianTurner]

I once did some extensive research into Lean's Bounty project - I am fascinated by the subject and even managed to get to Pitcairn Island last year. Anyway, I have several scripts in my possession: "The Lawbreakers" (dated 10 Oct 1977-23 July 1978; 173 pages). Another version of "The Lawbreakers" (141 pages). "Pandora's Box" (163 pages). And "The Saga of HMS Bounty" which is an early combination of the originally planned two films (102 pages).

From memory, the original idea was utterly brilliant: the picture would have opened with Captain Edward Edwards going to visit William Bligh on Portsmouth Sound. An embittered Bligh gives Edwards the Bounty's log and when Edwards joins his own ship, HMS Pandora, under orders to seek out and apprehend the mutineers, Edwards reads the log as he sails to the South Seas, his reading becoming a succession of flashbacks to the voyage of the Bounty.


There were also two fascinating little documentaries made about this wonderful project: Lost and Found, which shows Lean and Bolt in Tahiti, getting sidetracked by Eddie Fowlie's discovery at Tautira of one of Captain Cook's anchors. A later film, A Fated Ship, dealt with the making of the replica Bounty - I think it's currently a floating restaurant in Hong Kong. The Brando Bounty still does world tours.

 

[marsnkc]

OMG!


That info makes it even more frustrating that it didn't get made - and what a waste! One has to consider cost, of course, but some stories just need time to tell, and a two-parter may have been the only way to do it justice. (Good examples are the latest movie adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Brideshead Revisited. To compare them to the masterful TV versions makes them seem like a joke, considering the massive amount of plot and delicious characterizations that necessarily had to be abandoned - though I thought the former movie was well made. Brideshead was unwatchable).

May I ask how you got your hands on the scripts? I have the documentaries on VHS somewhere (uncataloged so I'll have to do some digging!).


My wish, if it could be granted in another life, is to see Lean's vision realized, along with Lawrence of Arabia with Brando, Sir David's first choice for the role (long before the incandescent O'Toole was ever heard of!), to see what Brando would have made of it.

 

[AdrianTurner]

I got the screenplays from various sources when I was writing a biography of Robert Bolt. A wonderful woman called Julie Laird gave me one or two I seem to remember. I tried to get the screenplay published (as was Pinter's Proust for Visconti) but no one was interested and, anyway, the copyright was probably a problem. Then I thought it might make a wonderful radio play for the BBC. I do sometimes think of all that amazing effort, the arguments, the agonizing, the money, the tropical torpor and Bolt's stroke and heart attack. "What a price to pay for a little show of temper" on Lean's part.

About Lawrence and Brando: I don't think Brando was a serious contender for the role. In those days Brando got offered every major part - from the title roles in The Apartment and Cleopatra (joke) - and I think Sam Spiegel just wanted to borrow his name for a while, to give his production some publicity. However, Lean did obviously have the highest regard for Brando and sought him for roles in Ryan's Daughter and Nostromo.

 

[marsnkc]

Adrian-


Thanks for the response. I just ordered your book 'Robert Bolt - Scenes from two lives' through AmazonUK. Only used copies are available through Amazon here in the U.S.


Poor Lean's temper was his own worst enemy and yes, all that effort etc. gone to waste - a tragedy for us all. I doubt, though, that he'd be too keen to have his 70mm, billion dollar dream transposed to a radio play for the BBC, as interesting and all as that might very well be. On the other hand, our imaginations might exceed even Lean's vision, since his would be shackled to the reality of the physically possible - and that cursed budget!


Following that vein, one of my treasures is 'A Man for all Seasons' (have you ever heard of it?...). At least a decade before the dream of home theater became a reality (for those of us who couldn't even afford to rent a 16mm or 35mm version of it - much less purchase one), I bought a double LP of the soundtrack (with DIALOGUE!) of 'Seasons'. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven and practically wore it out. I have to say that, brilliant as the movie is, when it finally came out on video the physical manifestations by the actors didn't quite come up to how I imagined them. But then, that would be a matter of interpretation. (Of course, I've watched it so often now that were I to listen to that LP again I would most likely only visualize those performances).

I can't imagine anyone being more suitable for the part than Scofield, but he tends to be a little stagey at times (understandable, though, since he created the role for the stage and played it eight times a week for months on end, and where a more subtle performance would be lost). But that 'ol camera captures more than the human eye can, and when the result gets thrown onto a huge screen, the slightest false move gets ruthlessly magnified a million times. It's a little simplistically put, but Brando was fundamentally right when he would tell actors, 'Just think the scene and the thought can be photographed' (he failed to add that little things like talent and technique, something he had in abundance, were also 'useful').

Anyway, comparing both performances today, I think Burton should have gotten the Oscar that year for 'Woolf'.


As to whether Brando was a serious contender for 'Lawrence' or not, it's evident from what I've read that Lean, as you say, admired him greatly. Brownlow says that, as 'Nostromo' got closer to the green light, Lean refused all phone calls except the hoped-for one from Brando. (It might be apocryphal, but when Spiegel announced at a press conference in London that Brando would star in 'Lawrence', one wag asked, 'Is this a speaking role?'

 

[marsnkc]

Originally Posted by AdrianTurner ('though Harrison's performance makes the first half bearable for me).

 

[owen35]

Originally Posted by AdrianTurner

 

[Robert Harris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by owen35

Zhivago was published by Random House in 1965, and is generally available used.

 

[owen35]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris

Quote:


Zhivago was published by Random House in 1965, and is generally available used.

I've looked numerous times on eBay and other sites for a copy and never saw one---until today!! Thanks for the info. Also, my math is clearly off as Lawrence will be hitting its 50th Anniversary in 2012, not 40th. (Maybe I'm just wishing I was younger and hoping it wasn't that old.) Hopefully its anniversary will be welcomed with the Blu-Ray release as well as the potential for another release to general theaters not just art houses.

 

[Vincent_P]

What's amazing is that, according to Steven Bach's book FINAL CUT, UA dropped the Lean BOUNTY films when it became clear that they'd cost around $30-million for the two films. This was at the same time that they were developing Michael Cimino's supposed-to-be-$11.6 million HEAVEN'S GATE. Lean should have just told UA he could make the films for $12-million and then gone over budget like Cimino did


Vincent