PART 1 IVAN THE TERRIBLE Movie Review

Ivan Groznyi

Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's brilliant, two-part historical epic Ivan the Terrible was filmed between 1944 and 1946. Though it was conceived of and written as a two-part film, what now exists as Ivan the Terrible, Part 2 is really just the first portion of Eisenstein's envisioned second half of the story; as the production grew in scope, he intended to turn the remainder of the script into a third and final film. He never got the chance. Production was halted by authorities after their horrified reaction to the completed portion of Part 2, which was promptly banned and went unseen for over 13 years. This was a blow that was especially puzzling to the great director, since Part 1 of Ivan—which had already been released separately—was not only a success, it won Eisenstein the coveted Order of Lenin. Then again. Part 1 didn't give us an ostensibly heroic tsar who was beginning to show distinctly paranoid and homicidal tendencies; Part 2 did. Ivan the Terrible is not what one would call a “personality driven” epic; it paints monumental historical events on a monumental canvas, and its considerable emotional power results from something akin to the wonder of geometry. Eisenstein wrote: “With Ivan we wished to convey a sense of majesty, and this led us to adopt majestic forms.” The Ivan portrayed here had a majestic goal as well; he wanted to prevent the dissolution of Russia into smaller sovereign states run by profiteers. He gets the mandate to do just that at the end of Part 1, and by the end of Part 2 Ivan and his secret police are knocking off whoever they have to accomplish his goal. Stalin wasn't pleased, and the fact that Eisenstein didn't anticipate that fact is a clear indicator of just how totally—and perhaps naively—he immersed himself in his art. It's also easy to see why this is a favorite film of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, whose epic portrait of the corruption of Michael Corleone may have had its stylistic genesis here. (Ivan's influence reaches into surprising places; Peter Weller said that his movements as RoboCop were fully based on Nikolai Cherkassov's elegantly stylized performance as Ivan.) Music by Sergei Prokofiev. Portions of Part 2 are in color.

NEXT STOP… Alexander Nevsky, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather Parts I & II

1944 96m/B RU Nikolai Cherkassov, Ludmila Tselikovskaya, Serafina Birman, Piotr Kadochnikev; D: Sergei Eisenstein; W: Sergei Eisenstein; C: Eduard Tisse; M: Sergei Prokofiev. VHS, 8mm, Letterbox NOS, MRV, WST