The craftsmanship that transformed Madrid into Russia

Previous experience with Lawrence of Arabiashot mostly in Almería, played a key role in the decision to shoot Doctor Zhivago In Spain. Also the proximity of CEA studies (American Spanish Cinematography), which had been inaugurated in 1932 and later expanded in the Barajas region. The film was his requiem: They closed in 1966, just a year after the films were shot there. splendid interiors of the work of David Lean.

One of the most beautiful visions of the film It is the one inside the Varykino Palace, which appears completely covered in snow when it houses its tragic protagonists. “Teddy Villalba tells how, in addition to the marble powders which serve to imitate this shine that the snow has, they used salt, sheets and white candle wax. The work to get that snow feeling is built in layers,” says Esperanza. In addition to Madrid, there were sites in Segovia, Guadalajara and Soria, where the lack of snow had to be made up for by craftsmanship.

The coldest scenes of the Siberian steppe had to re-registered in Finland and Alberta, Canadabut 90% of the film was shot in Spain: Candilichera, Villaseca de Arciel, Navaleno, Villar del Campo, Matamala de Almazán, El Cañuelo, Barajas, Guadix, the Aldeadávila dam or Campo del Gómara are some of the places that appear in it.

Moscow was located in the popular district of Canillas, where a 40,468 square meter replica of the Russian capital was built. It included a cobbled street of about 730 meters, railway tracks, a replica of the Kremlin and 60 commercial buildings and houses that surrounded a giant square. Even though the promotional material exaggerated the measurements of this construction, not as mammoth as we thought: the slope of the main street is rigged, with the final part much narrower than the facade, to give an impression of depth. All set photos were taken at wide angles so as not to inadvertently reveal the size of the prank.

Another of the most emblematic anecdotes of this fake Moscow was told by the woman herself. Geraldine Chaplin: when the extras played the Russian workers sang at the top of their voices internationala little Bloody Sunday almost took place in the streets of Canillas. Franco’s armed police, in charge of urban surveillance, appeared on the film set determined to respond to this communist provocation in the middle of the street, and took the details from the extras before David Lean convinced them, with great difficulty, that political outburst was a requirement of the script.

The urgent trip to Loewe and the birth of a trend

The Delicias Stationcurrent site of the railway museum, became the Moscow station where Zhivago welcomes Tonya, his fiancée, interpreted by a very young Geraldine Chaplin. Even though trains deserve a separate chapter In the story of this shoot (with RENFE contributing to many of those that appear in the film, which have continued to circulate and be on display for decades), prop man Julián Mateos shared a different anecdote with Esperanza García Claver.

“At that time when Tonya arrives, dressed to the end in Parisian fashion, with this look full pink by costume designer Phyllis Dalton, who had previously worked with Lean on Lawrence of Arabia—, the director saw the suitcases the team had and said they weren’t suitcases for a young woman. So they had to run to a Loewe store to get the bags to keep him happy. It’s fun but everything in the film worked on the same level: there was no limit“.

The production design team and the costume design team each won Oscars in 1966. “And the Zhivago style became fashionable all over the world,” says Esperanza. “In the English or American Vogues of the time, in store windows, everything was fashion. Doctor Zhivagoand haute couture designers picked it up too.” Geraldine Chaplin lived in London, was a it girl and was photographed by the most well-known visual artists of the time.”

This Jivago look adopted by companies like Yves Saint Laurent or Christian Dior he brought back the fur trims, silk braids, boots, beards and mustaches that would take hold in the late 1960s and dominate the era of counterculture revolution. On set, however, it was all the rules: Phyilis Dalton had to make sure that none of the extras took off the layers and layers of fur clothing they wore. they must have shot in a hot summer.

Plant flowers, spend time, ask for money

The production of Doctor Zhivago it had been prepared with a ten-month filming schedule, but the filming period extended beyond what was planned. David Lean wanted to capture the different seasons in his melodrama and even intervened in the natural environment. From the Netherlands to the city of Soria which will become Varykino, imported four thousand yellow daffodils that were planted in the field the previous fall. The beautiful flowers therefore germinated in the spring of the filming of the love scenes between Zhivago and Lara. First the truth, then the film.

The soundtrack, by Maurice Jarre (and unlike the production company, which wanted to hire someone else in place of the composer who ended up winning the Oscar), he only accentuates and completes a romanticism already more than present in the images . But, in Hollywood cinema, poetry also rhymes with control: the filmmaker’s obsessive pressure was about to break Omar Sharif, who says he held to the limit throughout filming for the emotional stress imposed on him by the director in such a role. Lili Muráti, the extra who played the woman who tried to jump on the train with a baby in her arms, was seriously injured under the fearless gaze of David Lean.

When the production company drew his attention to the exorbitant use of the budget, explains Esperanza García Claver, the manager threatened to stand up: “A whole entourage from MGM came to calm him down, they chartered a plane for Madrid. What Teddy Villalba says is very striking: the extras, the places, this magnitude of things that it seems impossible for it to exist again”.

Spain played a key role in this production, which was shot on Russia, but without Russia: Producer Carlo Ponti wanted to shoot in the Soviet Union, but the government wouldn’t allow it. Despite a huge cast of international actors, there are no artists of Russian or Russian descent in Doctor Zhivago. The film was not released in the country until 1988.