Did anyone else like Steiger better than Sharif?
Boy, I did! I think Rod Steiger is by far the more attractive and interesting character than Sharif, whom I regard as facile, weak and obscenely idealistic.
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MovieChat Forums > Doctor Zhivago (1965) Discussion > Did anyone else like Steiger better than...
I didn't enjoy either of their characters, I enjoyed Alec Guinness much more than either of them, and my favorite was Strelnikov.
To him mercy is passion With me it is good manners.You may judge which motive is more reliable
I thought Komarovsky was a much more interesting character than Zhivago,and the fact that Steiger put in such an amazing performance in the movie only helps the character even more.
I think its interesting how out of the 3 men in Laras life,Komarovsky,with all his faults,all his selfishness and need for control and power,is the one who in the end,loved Lara the most.Not a healthy love,but love after all.
Now both Zhivago and Pasha loved Lara but in both cases, they loved something even more. The revolution came first for Pasha, as he said himself, and Russia
was Zhivagos ultimate love, and the reason he didnt leave the country with Lara and instead let her go with Komarovsky.Victor on the other hand,while being a morally corrupt hedonist with no ideals or beliefs whose only worry was to remain a rich and powerfull playboy loved Lara above absolutely anything, or at least he later realized that he did.And the reason he did was,unlike Pasha and Yuri,he was a man of no spiritual or political ideals, a realist who "love(d) life",a sensualist who loved drinking, food and sex and cared little about anything else.This is what makes the character sympathetic to me, the fact that his feet were plantly firmly in the ground made him, in the end,be there for Lara in a way none of the other men were able to.
Of course, Lara didnt love Victor, in fact she hated him in the end ,but I think it had alot to do with the fact that he reminded her of her own dark, sensuous, corrupted side.She hated who Victor had turned her into and was much more at ease with the idealized, up on a pedestal,pure version of herself that Yuri saw in her.
"I thought Steiger was an ugly, repulsive animal, and Sharif was sensitive, sexy,handsome,and sweet."
Interesting. I find Sharif borderline repulsive in all roles (except his expressive eyes). I find Rod Steiger as Victor incredibly sexy, though overweight. I never found Sharif remotely handsome. Watch the trailer for Zhivag where he's not wearing his wig for the role and he has his naturally curly, receding hair and horrible teeth. He's truly repulsive.
you may not believe it but there are people with worse taste than yours. some has a fetich of the lover crapping on their face.
shareI am hugely impressed by Steiger's work in ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) and DR ZHIVAGO. One of the greatest acting scenes ever was the taxi scene in ON THE WATERFRONT. It involved Steiger and Brando, with the latter getting more attention because he was a huge star - but both performances are preternaturally skilled. Notwithstanding the taxi scene, I think Steiger is greater in ZHIVAGO than in WATERFRONT. What he did in just those two films alone earned him - in my opinion - a hallowed place among the best American actors of his generation.
I know good actors are expected to get accents right, but I think his English accent in ZHIVAGO is flawless (and I'm English). Curiously, as Viktor he sounds to me exactly like Richard Burton in CLEOPATRA (1963). I wondered whether he consciously chose to model his voice and accent on Burton's performance as Mark Antony?