Word: zhivago
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Okay, so "American Pie 2: Music from the Motion Picture" does not boast any material likely to join "Lara's Theme" from "Dr. Zhivago" and the overture from "Gone With the Wind" in the pantheon of soundtrack music treasured by successive generations. But the album, released by Universal a week before the movie opened last weekend to the tune of $45 million, bears scrutiny as a document of our age. Considered in combination with the movie, it offers an image of contemporary middle-class teenagers that differs widely from the image presented in the teen movies and music...
Thirteen of a thousand faces: center, as Capt. Henry St. James (The Captain's Paradise, 1953). Clockwise from top left: Herbert Pocket (Great Expectations, 1946); Agatha d'Ascoyne (Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1949); Professor Marcus (The Ladykillers, 1955); Colonel Nicholson (The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957) General Yevgraf Zhivago (Dr. Zhivago, 1965); Adolf Hitler (Hitler: The Last Ten Days, 1973); Professor Godbole (A Passage to India, 1984); Sigmund Freud (Lovesick, 1983); George Smiley (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 1980); Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi (Star Wars, 1977); King Charles I (Cromwell, 1970); Prince Feisal (Lawrence of Arabia...
Guinness would search the globe for new accents and characters: Japanese (A Majority of One), Bedouin (Lawrence of Arabia), Russian (Doctor Zhivago), Indian (A Passage to India). His transparency made it easy for him to incarnate specters; he was Marley's Ghost in Scrooge and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars--the role that heaped on him the annoyance of multigenerational fame. But "the force" was not with Guinness; delicacy and subversive wit were...
...Hollywood, David Lean used Guinness to hold up his epics, like the third leg of a tripod. As Colonel Nicholson in "Bridge on the River Kwai," the Arab prince Feisal in "Lawrence of Arabia," Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago in "Doctor Zhivago," there was the story, the place, and somewhere, Alec Guinness. The moment in "Kwai" when the maniacally correct Nicholson stumbles across William Holden - "You!" - and looks at the ground as bullets fly and disillusionment explodes all over Nicholson's face - could have won him his Best Actor all by itself. The movie, too big for the grimacing Holden to fill...
...plot itself is marvelously simple--an elegant story about an auto mechanic (brooding Nino Castelnuovo) drafted to fight in the 1950s French-Algerian War and the girl (achingly lovely Catherine Deneuve) back home. It could be a country song, or a classic short story, or a Doctor Zhivago epic. But the film's sense of place--capturing the wetness, char and sadness of provincial Cherbourg--and its compassion for all the characters sets it apart. I would love to say it's the story that gets me. But when I recall the film, that's not what comes back...