Doctor Zhivago

Ian Christie is a film historian, curator, broadcaster, Fellow of the British Academy and Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. His many publications include books on Russian cinema, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Sergei Eisenstein, Martin Scorsese and Terry Gilliam, as well as The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design (2012).

Christie's study of the film's reception usefully debunks a few myths, and draws wry comparisons between American critics' attitudes towards the film with Soviet critics' similar, if more ideologically driven, objections to the novel.

• Acknowledgments.- 1. How Zhivago Happened.- 2. Between Beauty and Goodness: the Making of Zhivago.- 3. Reception and Retrospect.- Notes.- Credits.