Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Alec Guinness: Yevgraf

Photos 

Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Tonya! Can you play the balalaika?

  David : Can she play? She's an artist!

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Who taught you?

  David : Nobody taught her!

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Ah... then it's a gift.

• Engineer : If they were to give me two more excavators, I'd be a year ahead of the plan by now.

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : You're an impatient generation.

  Engineer : Weren't you?

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Yes, we were, very. Oh, don't be so impatient, Comrade Engineer. We've come very far, very fast.

  Engineer : Yes, I know that, Comrade General.

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Yes, but do you know what it cost? There were children in those days who lived off human flesh. Did you know that?

• Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: One man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic. Five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city. That was the first time I ever saw my brother. But I knew him. And I knew that I would disobey the party. Perhaps it was the tie of blood between us, but I doubt it. We were only half tied anyway, and brothers will betray a brother. Indeed, as a policeman, I would say, get hold of a man's brother and you're halfway home. Nor was it admiration for a better man than me. I did admire him, but I didn't think he was a better man. Besides, I've executed better men than me with a small pistol.

• Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : [narrating; on World War I]  By the second winter, the boots had worn out... but the line still held. Even Comrade Lenin underestimated both the anguish of that 900-mile long front... as well our own cursed capacity for suffering. Half the men went into action without any arms... irregular rations... led by officers they didn't trust.

  Officer : [to soldiers]  Come on, you bastards!

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : And those they did trust...

  Pasha : [leaps out of the trench and begins leading his men in a charge]  Come on, Comrades! Forward, comrades! Earth-shakers!

  [an artillery shell explodes in front of him; he falls to the ground, and the soldiers retreat to their trench] 

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Finally, when they could stand it no longer, they began doing what every army dreams of doing...

  [the soldiers begin to leave their trenches] 

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : They began to go home. That was the beginning of the Revolution.

• [repeated line] 

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : How did you come to be lost?

• Engineer : We admire your brother very much.

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Yes. Everybody seems to, now.

  Engineer : Well, we couldn't admire him when we weren't allowed to read him...

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : No.

• Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : But if people love poetry, they love poets. And nobody loves poetry like a Russian.

• Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : [on Lara's last years]  She'd come to Moscow to look for her child. I helped her as best I could, but I knew it was hopeless. I think I was a little in love with her. One day she went away and didn't come back. She died or vanished somewhere, in one of the labor camps. A nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid. That was quite common in those days.

• Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : This man was your father. Why won't you believe it? Don't you want to believe it?

  The Girl : Not if it isn't true.

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : That's inherited.

• The Girl : I'm not your niece, Comrade General.

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : Well, I'm nobody's idea of an uncle. But if this man were my father, I should want to know.

• Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : [narrating over a military parade in Moscow]  In bourgeois terms, it was a war between the Allies and Germany. In Bolshevik terms, it was a war between the Allied and German upper classes - and which of them won was of total indifference. My task was to organize defeat, so as to hasten the onset of revolution. I enlisted under the name of Petrov. The party looked to the peasant conscript soldiers - many of whom were wearing their first real pair of boots. When the boots had worn out, they'd be ready to listen. When the time came, I was able to take three whole battalions out of the front lines with me - the best day's work I ever did. But for now, there was nothing to be done. There were too many volunteers. Most of it was mere hysteria.

• Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : [narrates]  He was walking about with a noose round his neck and didn't know. So I told him what I'd heard about his poems.

  Zhivago : Not... liked? Not liked by whom? Why not liked?

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : [narrates]  So I told him that

  Zhivago : Do you think it's personal, petit-bourgeoise and self-indulgent?

  [Yevgraf nods] 

  Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago : [narrates]  I lied. But he believed me.