The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 21

0t" j.yiiinii Zhivago' a Poetic Picture 2 ILPflt angtltg tgiimg FRI, OEC. 24, 1 965-Parl II I 11111:3 TODAY 3 SHOWS! 2:00 8:30 and 11:45 P.M. SUNDAY 3 SHOWS! 1:30 5:00 and 8:30 P. M. TOMORROW (CHRISTMAS) 4 SHOWS! 1:30 5:00 8:30 and 11:45 P.M.

11 BY PHILIP K. SCIIEUER Tlmei Motion Picnir iditor You don't necessarily have to be superstitious: It almost stands to reason that David Lean, director of "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Lawrence of Arabia," will have done it a third time in "Doctor Zhivago." He has. The Hollywood Paramount, where it premiered Thursday night; the town itself, and a large portion of the world outside the Iron Curtain (and maybe even behind it) are bound to be rocked by discussions, pro and con, about the merits of this 3'2-hour motion picture. It is that kind of picture: so big it can't be ignored. But also, esthetically, because Lean is one of the legendary great moviemakers, perhaps the best around.

(Parenthetical thought: If only he possessed a sense of humor, too. But we can't have everything.) mm mm Elf -----i A I i II im nn ri ii 18 Christie as Lara, his great love, and Geraldine Chaplin as his sweetheart-since-childhood and wife; Alec Guinness as his half-brother Yevgraf, Communist official, and Rita Tushingham as the Girl he quizzes; Tom Courtenay as the youth Pasha, admirer of Lara, who later becomes the terrible Gen. Strelnikov; Rod Steiger as Komarovsky, seducer of Lara and political opportunist; and Siobhan McKcn-na and Ralph Richardson as Zhivago's foster parents. Complicated Group These relationships may sound complicated, and they are but after you get them pinned down you should certainly know them well enough. In fact, some of them turned up so often, sometimes, unexpectedly, that there were snickers in the audience.

The snickers were hardly for the performers. I found them all varied, remarkable and, most miraculous of all, quite consistently "Russian," though none more electric and even electrifying than Miss Christie, Courtenay and Steiger. And, on a more gentle level, Sharif. The almost countless bit and extra parts are excellently filled. MGM which has $11 million going on "Doctor Zhivago" and I who have only your artistic uplift at heart expect you to let us hear it for this movie or else.

Seriously, if you will brace yourself for an inordinately lengthy session intermission notwithstanding in a theater seat, I can promise you some fine film-making. And by "you" I am not excluding the fair sex which in itself is newsworthy these days. "How the West Was Mm STARS AT PREMIERE Two stars of film "Doctor Zhivago," Geraldine Chapman and Omar Sharif, attend West Coast premiere at Hollywood Paramount. Times Photo FIJI uu WHY ARE YOU HERE? HOW IN THE HELL DID THEY HIDE A MILLION MEN? Mk i vr vrff Doctor's Other Talent It is interesting that Zhi-' vago, the doctor, was also a poet. Interesting for two reasons.

First: Boris Pas-I ternak, the Russian novel- ist who created him semi-J biographically, was presu-j mably a poet too. Happily, his work has been placed in the hands of other poets Lean; Robert Bolt, his adapter and screenwriter; 5 Freddy Young, his Panavi-; sion-and-Metrocolor cine-; matographer; John Box, his production designer; 5 Norman Savage, film edi-j tor; Maurice Jarre, compo- ser of the score; nameless others of his staff, and the performers themselves, What comes out is, I I think, above all poetry, Second: the triumph becomes that much more unusual because Zhivago WAS a poet. For I can't imagine anything much more static and uncinema-' tic than a view of a poet writing a poem and in Russian yet unless it's a i view of a Michelangelo ly- ing on a scaffold and paint-; ing the ceiling above him. Common Complaint Well, Zhivago writing a poem in Russian is still, per se, static, but Jarre in 1 his soaring music all but makes the "words" sound. In those discussions I ex-I pect to follow, the most freqypnt complaint you iare likely to hear is that Lean's latest, like the two is too long.

And of course and again it is. Especially in the second in the period of the poet's prolificacy mentioned above his idyllic hideaway in the cottage at Varykino with Lara, his il- licit love. i Young, this one is as throat catchingiy magnificent as the screen could be, the apotheosis of the cinema as an art. With Spain and Finland doubling, absolutely incredibly, for Moscow and the Urals in all seasons, we are transplanted to another land and time. I could rave on and on about certain shots the dash of the little refugee train and its bumping boxcars through the snowy countryside, Zhivago's nightmare trek across the winter wasteland, men shimmering in the haze like the camel rider in "Lawrence." But the peak of imaginative beauty is attained in a dissolve between sub-zero weather and spring breezes, revealed through ice crystals on a windowpane which turn into a close-up garden of yellow daffodils.

It Hurries, Too If the picture seems to linger betimes in its later portions it may also be charged conversely with hurrying us along too quickly in the opening reels, while we are still trying to establish an acquaintance with the characters. This may not apply to the book's readers, but most of us haven't read it. The people we meet and eventually come to know are, principally, Omar Sharif as Zhivago (Sharif's son Tarek as a boy), Julie whole interior narrative within the flashback-framework. When we return to the narrator (Gen. Yevgraf) and his listener (the Girl) we have been through so much that our feeling is almost one of frustration although these scenes do give the story a kind of philosophi-' cal wrap-up.

Personal Histories What have we been through? Just about the whole Russian Revolution from 1903 to 1933, from the Czar to Stalin. Not in the spectacular, in the super-super, sense (though that, in its proper place, is here too) but in the more personal, interlocking histories of perhaps a dozen human beings who stand out in a cast of 40. The canvas reminds of "War and Peace." As color painted by Lean and cameraman 'Stick Your Neck Out' Bought for Broadway Exclusivi to Tht Times from The New York News NEW YORK "Stick Your Neck Out," a new musical based on a novel by Mordecai Richler, a Canadian, has been acquired for Broadway production next fall. Jerome J. Schwartz is making the adaptation.

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130QI30IJEJ TECHNICOLOR' Jiti-iiU IJziL Till Li) IHJ LizilLJ Lb tnYlDli-ilirilRl-lAlMHilBJ BARBARA WERLE GQIRGE M0liiT6QMERY TY HARDIN-CHARLES BRONSON Also questionable is the wisdom of setting the Everybody and his favorite body is going-going to Boeing-Boeing All about two dedicated Airline Hostess adept at keeping one hostess in the air, one on the ground and one pending. Auwiiiiivvwn HflV Directed It tKU 1 HOLLYWOOD cuivie citt CULVER Vt 13124 Kinii IMPCRML 0. I 5131 HO 3-931 Omm am WfjtW MMuraeoe UNITED ARTISTS 7HS77 UNITED ARTISTS 77S-172S IMTAMA UNITED ARTISTS 43 9288 eilNDALC ftttCO MUSTS CAPITOL Cl 14HI Toue Mir eirTua. INT I IANTA HONIC ELMIRO 394603 lie 1 Coitrin DANYSAVAL 0312 33) III BLECH WESNER PETERS-JAMES MacARTHUR sass fl If HARMON Wnllan hi ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK ALBUM ON WARNER BROS. RECORDS ULTRA PANAVISION' TECHNICOLOPl mjjl SEE-BATTLEFIELD EXHIBIT ADJOINING THEATRE! pacific's lOlTlSQEM "V7icrc Movie-Going is an Event" CHRISTIANESCHMIDTMER (02o38 SUZANNA LEIGH.ndTHEL.MA RITTER (34.Jt.34) imtm a mm owxtni i-.

hb Paramount SUNSET near VINE HOLLYWOOD HO 6-3401 by JOHN RICH Screenplay by EDWARD ANHALT MCiriC PlIAOCMt COLORADO SY t-S04 CANCM1A MMK CAN06A PK eeivciN 01 6-6211 IAN Aimti CULVI SAN GABRIEL STUDIO Minw Min-m AT. SSM EX.IS2M FOR THEATRE PARTIES AN0 GROUP SALES PLEASE PHONE TR. 8-291S HOLIDAY MATINEES! sepoiveda OUVE INS CITT PACOtMA LAUREL nivf-ii tM9-2i4 MAMA LAHABRA Mive tnmz CITY Of INtlUSTe VIHELAND Htn.m 10 ciimh VERMONT Hivi-ni t340 SAN PEDRO mnm Tt I M70 Minia ST 6 6520 AT ALL THEATRES! COMPTON COMPTON V. IAITLA. ecueAiDiNt SOLO EN CATE Call Tktalin tor Show Timti! SAGE um-m AN 3 UK rsatxtsetor 92-1135 linvl mm mm AM Cont.

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