Doctor Zhivago at 60: David Lean’s sweeping romantic relic endures

Julie Christie remains as magnetic as ever in the mammoth big screen adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s once dangerous novel

There’s no more perfect illustration of the cinematic crossroads of the mid-1960s than the year Julie Christie had in 1965. First, she starred as an amoral model in John Schlesinger’s Darling, a snapshot of Swinging London that reflected the trendy, flashy, forward-thinking culture that had seduced young adults. Then she starred as an elusive Russian beauty in Doctor Zhivago, a three-hour-plus historical epic from David Lean that was as stodgy and old-fashioned as Darling was suggestive of the future. There was an appetite for both that year – credit…