!!For the novel

* BannedInChina: Pasternak's book was originally banned in the Soviet Union. A Dutch secret agent managed to get his hands on a Russian copy and he distributed it to his contacts at the CIA. They produced (technically pirated because an Italian publishing house held the original rights) thousands of copies of the original book and gave them to unsuspecting Soviet tourists at the 1958 World's Fair who smuggled them back to the USSR.
** And the movie wasn't shown in Russia until 1994.
* {{Defictionalization}}: Later editions include excerpts of Yuri's poetry.

!!For the film

* AllStarCast: Notably, the actors are credited in alphabetical order, despite Creator/OmarSharif clearly playing the central character.
* CaliforniaDoubling: Being that they couldn't shoot in the Soviet Union, most of the film was shot in Spain. Some of the winter scenes were shot in Finland and Canada.
* CastTheRunnerUp: Creator/OmarSharif was originally cast as Pasha with Creator/PeterOToole as Zhivago. When O'Toole declined, Sharif got the lead role.
* DirectedByCastmember: Creator/OmarSharif directed his son, playing the young Zhivago, himself so he'd get a better feel of the character.
* DyeingForYourArt: Creator/OmarSharif shaved off his real hair as it looked too Middle Eastern, and wore a wig to play Zhivago.
* EnforcedMethodActing:
** In an early scene, Komarovsky was supposed to kiss a shocked Lara. After noticing in rehearsals that Creator/JulieChristie was anticipating the scene and showing nervousness, Creator/RodSteiger, with Creator/DavidLean's permission, decided, while kissing her, to not let her go and follow up that first kiss with a french kiss. It worked.
** Another example (possibly) is when Komarovsky buys Lara that red dress and forces her to wear it. Shooting the scene was apparently delayed because Creator/JulieChristie was so repulsed by it that she refused to wear the dress. She was coaxed out by the production designer, who pointed out that Lara didn't want to wear the dress either, but she's forced to. Christie then agreed. When you watch the scene, Christie's discomfort and unwillingness really shines through.
* FakeRussian: The Lebanese-Egyptian Creator/OmarSharif as the Russian Dr. Yuri Zhivago. Then again, most of the cast are British (or in Creator/RodSteiger's case, American) actors playing Russians, so the trope's in effect for everyone.
* HostilityOnTheSet: Creator/AlecGuinness and Creator/DavidLean quarreled frequently on the set of this film. According to Guinness, Lean was "acting the part of a super-star director" and frequently insulted Guinness's performance and him personally. This caused a rift to develop between the two and they would not work again until ''Film/APassageToIndia'' almost twenty years later.
* LateExportForYou: The film wasn't shown in Russia until 1994, after the Soviet Union collapsed.
* PopCultureUrbanLegends: It's widely rumored that during the filming of one of the train scenes, a stuntwoman [[AnArmAndALeg had her legs cut off]] when she fell under the wheels. Rumors further suggest that the footage of the incident made it into the final film. There's a grain of truth to this: Lili Murati ''did'' fall under the train wheels due to a miscommunication between her and Creator/OmarSharif, and her stumble ''did'' end up in the finished movie, but she wasn't seriously injured.
* ProductionPosse: Creator/DavidLean reused some of the crew of ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'' - scriptwriter Creator/RobertBolt, composer Music/MauriceJarre, and production designer John Box, not to mention actors Creator/OmarSharif and Creator/AlecGuinness.
* PromotedFanboy: Creator/OmarSharif was a big fan of the novel.
* RealLifeRelative: Creator/OmarSharif's son played the young Zhivago.
* TheRedStapler: The film's costumes inspired the "Zhivago Look" fordesigners like Yves St. Laurent and Christian Dior. Fur trims, silkbraiding and boots came back into fashion thanks to the film. Also returned to fashion by the film's success was facial hair. Beards and mustaches were in, just in time for the counter-culture revolution of the late '60s.
* StarMakingRole: For Creator/GeraldineChaplin and Creator/JulieChristie, along with the same year's ''Film/{{Darling}}''.
* ThrowItIn: In another scene, after Lara slaps Komarovsky, he slaps her back with his glove. Komarovsky's response wasn't on the script. Creator/RodSteiger later commented that "nobody slaps Komarovsky and gets away with it".
* TroubledProduction:
** Producer Carlo Ponti won a bidding war for the film rights to Boris Pasternak's novel, and wanted it to be a spectacle on the same scale as ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'', so he hired many of the same crew members, including Creator/DavidLean, script writer Creator/RobertBolt, composer Music/MauriceJarre, and production designer John Box. He wanted location shooting to take place in the Soviet Union, but was refused permission by the government due to the content of the novel. Scandinavia was deemed too cold for a lengthy film shoot, while Yugoslavia was ruled out for both the cold weather and the obstructive bureaucracy; the location shooting was mostly done in Spain. Construction of the Moscow set in a suburb of Madrid took nearly eighteen months, while filming itself fell behind schedule as Lean hoped to shoot scenes during each of the various seasons as depicted in the novel. Unfortunately, the winter scenes did not go as planned due to the unusually mild winter, and they were instead mostly filmed in summer in temperatures as high as 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with marble dust and plastic snow standing in for actual snow and the actors' profuse sweating requiring frequent makeup touchups.[[note]] Some of the winter scenes were filmed in more appropriate weather in Finland and Canada.[[/note]]
** As an Egyptian playing a Russian, Creator/OmarSharif had to undergo a strenuous make-up process each day, involving shaving his hairline by 2-3 inches (which then had to be waxed every three days as it grew back), straightening his remaining hair, and taping his eyes back. Meanwhile, Creator/JulieChristie initially refused to wear the red dress that so captivates Zhivago's attention; as Lean was essentially incapable of buttering up his actors, he had to ask John Box to persuade her for him.
** The relationship between Creator/DavidLean and Creator/AlecGuinness had become certifiably toxic; Lean frequently insulted not only Guinness' performance as Yevgraf Zhivago but also Guinness personally. Guinness recalled Lean mocking him as too old for the character and saying his "face was too fat onscreen," a criticism Guinness neither understood nor appreciated. This treatment generated a rift between the two men that would last nearly twenty years.[[note]] And even that reconciliation was short-lived; when most of Guinness' performance in Lean's final film as director, ''Film/APassageToIndia'', ended up on the cutting room floor, the duo fell out once and for all.[[/note]]
** The original director of photography was Creator/NicolasRoeg, but he resigned after CreativeDifferences with Lean led to a major falling out between the two. Freddie Young, the director of photography from ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'', was offered the job, and though he was reluctant to work with Lean again after the exhausting experience of shooting Lawrence, he eventually agreed, but needed two weeks to re-shoot the scenes that Roeg had shot before his resignation.
** The political climate in Spain (under Fascist leader FranciscoFranco) made it a risky country in which to shoot a film about the Russian Revolution. The scene in which the crowd chants the Marxist anthem, "The Internationale", was filmed at 3am; the police, thinking an actual Marxist revolution was taking place, descended on the shoot and insisted on staying until the scene had been filmed. The mostly Spanish extras, fearful that the police would arrest them as Communist subversives, had to pretend not to know the words to "The Internationale".
** During shooting of a scene in which Zhivago pulls a young mother onto a train after first pulling her baby onto the train, the actress playing the young mother, Lili Murati, panicked when Omar Sharif grabbed her hand; a miscommunication between the two ultimately resulted in Murati falling under the train's wheels. Fortunately, she had bunched up and thus avoided having her limbs severed, while her thick clothing also protected her from serious injury.
** The film continued to stumble in its first weeks in cinemas. Critics thought the film too long, the love affair between Zhivago and Lara too soap operatic, and the depiction of historical events too facile. Maurice Jarre's score, especially "Lara's Theme", was widely dismissed as "syrupy". Lean later said that during the first few weeks, "you could hurl boulders in the theatre and not hit anyone." However, the film and especially "Lara's Theme" eventually caught on with audiences, with Jarre winning his second Oscar and the film having one of the ten highest box office takes in cinema history (adjusted for inflation).
* UncreditedRole: Creator/IngridPitt appears throughout this film in five different uncredited bit roles.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** Creator/StanleyKubrick expressed interest in the novel soon after it was first published in the US. In 1958 he and producer James B. Harris began negotiating with the publishers for rights to ''Zhivago'', planning to cast Creator/KirkDouglas as Zhivago. Kubrick even [[https://nofilmschool.com/kubrick-zhivago contacted Pasternak]] to seek his approval. However, Kubrick and Harris were forced to back out after bidding for the rights exceeded what they were able to pay.
** Creator/PeterOToole was the original choice for Yuri, while Creator/OmarSharif was cast as Pasha. However, O'Toole refused to work with Lean again following ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'' and Sharif got the lead role. Creator/DirkBogarde, Creator/SeanConnery, Creator/BurtLancaster, Creator/PaulNewman, Creator/RodTaylor and Creator/MaxVonSydow were also considered. Creator/MichaelCaine tells in his autobiography that he also read for Zhivago and participated in the screen shots with Christie, but (after watching the results with Lean) was the one who suggested Sharif.
** Carlo Ponti wanted to cast his wife Creator/SophiaLoren as Lara, but Lean thought she was too tall for the role. Creator/JaneFonda was offered the role, but turned it down because she didn't want to go to Spain for nine months. Several weeks later she changed her mind and told her agent she wanted to do it. By then Creator/JulieChristie had been signed to play Lara. In 2014, she said that of all the movies she turned down, this one is the one she regrets the most. Creator/JeanneMoreau was also considered.
** Lean wanted Creator/MarlonBrando or Creator/JamesMason to play Victor, but they never responded, being unwilling to spend 12 months working on the film.
** Lean wanted Creator/AudreyHepburn to play Tonya, but changed his mind when he came across Creator/GeraldineChaplin.
** The role of Pasha was written with Creator/AlbertFinney in mind. However, Lean was bitter about him turning down ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia''.
** Creator/WilliamHartnell was offered a role, but was unavailable.
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