Russian Zhivago
The well-known Russian film director Alexander Proshkin starts making a film version of the novel “Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak. Photo and film tests are being made at Mosfilm now.
- Alexander Anatoljevich, why is it “Doctor Zhivago”?
This is one of the most mysterious and serious literary works of the second half of the twentieth century. It is a story, no matter how outworn it may sound, about the enigma of Russian intelligentsia that lives not according to clear aims or tasks but out of feelings, love. The novel is also about love to the country in its most tragic period. The special view of Pasternak is confirmed by his destiny: after he received the Nobel Prize he could easily leave the country, but he did not. Because it would mean spiritual death for him.
There exist different interpretations of this novel: two film versions and good many performances, and of course our picture will enter into a dialogue with what had been already made before. “Doctor Zhivago” is not the biography of Pasternak, but it is impossible to tear off Pasternak’s mystic dramatic destiny and the novel’s destiny from its plot. One is superimposed on another. From within we view this novel not as Europeans or Americans. We know and feel something more.
- Will it be a feature film or a TV serial?
- The word “serial” makes me shiver. Although half of my life I have worked on TV, I have nothing to do with what is called a serial. A serial, in my understanding, is soap. What a serial is made for? In order to account for the available money and to invite popular actors and have them babble on the screen as long as possible.
“Doctor Zhivago” will be a multi-series television feature film. We are trying to transfer Pasternak’s prose to a completely different genre – the genre of drama.
- For whom is your new work intended?
- I think that it’s intended for a wide audience. The plot is based on complex human relationships, love.
- What popular actors will perform in the picture?
- As for the actors, it is not so simple. It is very difficult to find that type of intellectual that was in Soviet cinema. There was a galaxy of splendid actors: Batalov, Smoktunovsky, Dal… People came to work in this profession having very big inner ambitions, they considered profession of an actor as their human mission. Now people of this kind do not work for this trade. Although the new generation of actors is coming in – they are lively, authentic, natural, but there are very few people among them like Dal. And our remarkable generation of forty-year-olds – the beauty and pride of today's cinema - is a little bit oldish. And besides, in the given context a new person is more dependable. However, well-known actors are sure to be there.
- Where will the shooting take place?
- The action develops during 25 years from 1905 till 1930, now in Moscow, now in the Urals, now in Carpathian Mountains. Unfortunately, in today’s Moscow it is impossible to shoot not only Moscow of 1905, but even Moscow of 1930. The city is deformed, that epoch is present no longer. So, we are trying to discover small pieces of that epoch around the country: we should adhere to the atmosphere of that time.
Script by - Yury Arabov
Directed by - Alexander Proshkin
Camera by - Gennady Kariuk
Art Design by - Victor Yushin
Music by - Eduard Artemiev
Produced at Mosfilm by Central Partnership Company.
Lada Akimova
Translated by O.Zolotareva