Conclusion

Writing of the snowscape farewell between Yuri (Omar Sharif) and Lara (Julie Christie) ¹ in Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965), Hollis Alpert describes the following exchange on the set during production:

Lean said to his prop man: “Eddie, can you make it glisten?”

“I can,” Eddie replied, “but it won't look real.”

“I don't want it to,” Lean said. A few minutes later, cellophane had been spread over the snow-covered trees and bushes. “You see,” Lean explained later, “I wanted it all to look not real, I wanted their memory of the scene all glistening in moonlight and with wolves howling in the distance.” ²

In this passage, Lean privileges the artful conveyance of “glistening” over the “real” look of wintry weather, a preference that seems to have virtually scripted Roger Ebert's description of the scene as a “winter fairyland … where you simultaneously think about the skilled set decoration, and you catch your breath at the beauty.” ³ Evocative of Vilmos Szigmond's claim that “we want the audience to not just see the brightness, but also to feel it” (see the section in chapter 5 on McCabe & Mrs. Miller), Lean's phrasing expresses a desire for emotional realism as generated by weatherly hyperbole, in which the “memory of the scene” more important than its realistic appearance.