The Rialto David Lean season in Dunedin continued this week with Doctor Zhivago. Often glibly dismissed as Lean’s most commercially successful work, today’s screening emphasized to me that Doctor Zhivago is an immensely personal and powerful piece of cinema. Contrasts abound; Lean shot the love scenes harshly and the war scenes romantically. Contrary to those glib put downs by the critics, Lean gives us striking characters in a gripping plot. It would perhaps be surprising to those critics that Lean in fact initially wanted to film Doctor Zhivago in black and white for stark effect. Yet Lean clearly felt there was more he wanted to do with Zhivago, even in the last days of his life he talked about his wish to remake Doctor Zhivago.