I've never seen ... Doctor Zhivago
Would David Lean’s epic Russian-revolution romance stir my heart or leave me stone-cold? Well, all the balalaikas set my teeth on edge from the start
Wed 6 May 2020 10.00 BST
Doctor Zhivago barely figured on my radar at a time when I was more interested in James Bond and the Beatles than romance, and I never caught up with it. A Passage to India, the first David Lean film I saw on a big screen, featured Alec Guinness in blackface, which was enough to put anyone off. I liked Brief Encounter and Lean’s Dickens adaptations, and a late-1980s screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm was, of course, stunning, but I’d never been chomping at the bit to fill in those Lean gaps in my viewing.