Funny Lady (1975)

Barbra Streisand is charming and endearing as Fanny Brice in this colourful sequel to Funny Girl (1968). I preferred it to that earlier film, as it seems looser and more playful. Brice is struggling to get over her marriage to Nick (Omar Sharif), but falls in love with impresario Billy Rose (James Caan).

There’s plenty of comedy and the script is sharp. The interplay between Streisand and Caan is especially watchable, even if you can never quite believe in their romance. Then again, that may be the point: these characters are rivals rather than soulmates.

The film slightly loses its way in the second half, becoming more of a conventional musical. The point at which Barbra sings from a small biplane is just ludicrous. Likewise, her attempt to sabotage a theatrical rehearsal in a swimming pool by clowning around in the water doesn’t really work as a scene or ring true with the story we’ve started to believe. Another oddity is Roddy McDowall cast as her gay friend Bobby. He hangs around and doesn’t say much in a way that suggests the film doesn’t need him at all.

But at her best, Streisand is hugely charismatic and when she gets a chance to really act – as she does in a few scenes – the results are impressive.

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

David Lean’s adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel is a lavish but disjointed epic that grinds on for 200 minutes. Omar Sharif stars as the doctor of the title, who falls in love with young Lara Antipova (Julie Christie). The film takes in World War I, the Russian revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War with a plot that’s too meandering to summarise neatly. Sometimes it races through events briskly, while at other times it appears to linger on scenes that don’t warrant being stretched out – a problem with pacing. 

On the plus side, the colours are rich and the all-star cast is uniformly excellent. It’s nice to see Julie Christie and Tom Courtenay back together again two years after Billy Liar, even if they don’t have much chemistry this time around. Omar Sharif is charismatic, with twinkling eyes and an undeniable presence, while Alec Guinness has a certain authority as the doctor’s brother. Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger and Ralph Richardson are all compelling, too.

On the down side, sometimes the narrative signposting is muddled. For example, when Lara cannot find her husband after the battle, we assume he’s dead but she neither mourns him nor asks about him. It’s simply not clear how she feels or how we’re meant to respond. I wondered if this was because the plot had to be condensed to work as a film, but if that’s the case maybe it could have added some simple explanatory sentences to bridge chunks of narrative that had to be cut. And if that is the reason, it’s ironic that they still ended up with such an incredibly long film (it takes up both sides of a DVD) that often feels slow and cumbersome.