Pasternak (1965) User Reviews

You get your nine minutes worth . . .

[cricket30 · 8/10 · 12 January 2015]

. . . from this documentary short about the creator of "Strelnikov," who's right up there with the knitting Madame Defarge (A TALE OF TWO CITIES) as a feared fictional revolutionary functionary who made the transition to the Big Screen. From this mini-biography, we learn that Boris Pasternak was forced to decline his Nobel Prize in Literature by a Russian government almost as restrictive as the one "Mad Dog" Putin is running today. Coming from a privileged background, Boris spent his early career grinding out poetry (a genre too obtuse for the censors to comprehend when they were rewarding one-way tickets to Siberia such as the one provided for novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). Then, when he was too old to have his Youth stolen from him, Pasternak smuggled his DR. ZHIVAGO manuscript to a foreign country to be published, including some of his poems in an appendix to the book in the guise of being the work of the title physician. As a youngster, Boris rubbed shoulders with the Hoi Polloi such as Leo Tolstoy, author of WAR AND PEACE.

Trying For Variety In Coming Attractions

[boblipton · 7/10 · 20 January 2023]

Here's a one-reel coming attraction for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO that concentrates on the movie's source, the novel of the same name, and its author, Boris Pasternak. It begins with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Pasternak, and his refusal to accept it. It's graciously worded, hinting at political pressure.

We then get a biography of Pasternak, illustrated not by moving images, but sketches and still pictures.

It's certainly not your standard coming attraction, and by that, is certainly compelling, offering a bit of a mystery to its subject, and to the novel.... and thereby, to the movie.