Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein

Film Review

The final great work from the legendary Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein is both a compelling portrait of one of the most important figures in Russian history and an insightful reflection of the era in which the film was made.  Like Eisenstein's earlier Alexander Nevsky (1938), Ivan the Terrible was a propaganda film, intended as an appeal to Soviet unity at a time when fascism was proving to be a serious threat to communism.  When the film was being made, Soviet Russia was under attack from the German armies and the fall of Moscow looked to be imminent.

Ivan the Terrible was to have been in three parts.  Part I was completed in 1944 and was so well appreciated by the Communist Party that it was awarded the Stalin Prize First Class.  Whilst celebrating this achievement and the completion of his work on Part II, Eisenstein suffered a heart attack.   Recovering in hospital, the director learned that his Communist sponsors were so offended by Part II that they had no choice but to ban the film unless some drastic alterations were made.  Eisenstein agreed, but the only change he made was to re-shoot, in colour, the final sequence of the film (in which Ivan attempts to justify his actions). Although Eisenstein did subsequently manage to patch things up with Stalin, the film's ban remained in force for another twelves years.  It was not until 1958, five years after Stalin's death, that Part II could be seen. Eisenstein had already begun work on Part III, but only about 20 minutes of material had been shot, and most of this was destroyed by the Communists.

It is not hard to see why Part II was so inflammatory.  Whereas Part I portrayed Ivan as a great popular leader, driven by noble ambitions to reunite his lands and his people, Part II showed him as a merciless tyrant, increasingly paranoid and resorting to morally dubious methods to achieve his political objectives.  This would not have been such a problem if it were not for the fact that the Soviet leader Josef Stalin closely identified himself with the Tsar Ivan.   Consciously or otherwise, in making Ivan the Terrible Eisenstein had been making a critique of Stalin which was dangerously close to the knuckle.

You may wonder why the Communist leader was so inclined to identify himself with the Tsar, given that the first objective of the Russian Revolution was to bring a decisive end to Tsar rule.   That Stalin saw himself as a Tsar implied that the Revolution was a failure.  All it achieved was to replace one autocracy with another having arguably less legitimacy.  So, as well as equating Stalin with one of history's most notorious tyrants, Eisenstein's film also pretty well admits that the Russian Revolution was a waste of time.  It's surprising Eisenstein didn't end his days in a gulag.

Few would deny that Ivan the Terrible is among Eisenstein's finest accomplishments; it is quite possibly the greatest film ever made in Russia.  In contrast to the biting realism of the director's earlier films, this is highly stylised work which brings an exaggerated form of cinematic expressionism to the classical theatrical tradition of Greek and Shakesperean tragedy.  Each shot is meticulously composed, with lighting carefully arranged to create the most spectacular dance of shadows on the characters' faces and on the walls of the sets.  The style of acting is deliberately exaggerated, more akin to what you would expect in a silent film.  And the costumes are elaborate and ornate to a level that is several levels up from kitsch.  All this creates a universe that is alien from one we can recognise, yet the experience of watching the film is so intense that you cannot help being drawn into another world, another time, far remote from our own, and hence so utterly awe-inspiring.  As a piece of cinematic art, Ivan the Terrible is an extraordinary achievement, and quite unique.

As well as a great filmmaker, Eisenstein was also a great intellectual, and his films are laden with abstruse symbolism and deep philosophical undertones.   One favourite theory of his was the dialectic reasoning that had been popularised by Marx and Engels.  In his earlier films, Battleship Potemkin and October (1928), Eisenstein had explored the use of dialectic montage, whereby starkly contrasting images - representing the opposing forces of thesis and antithesis - are brought together to form a recognisable end-product, the synthesis.   For Eisenstein, Tsar Ivan proved to be the perfect subject for dialectic analysis, although here his approach is somewhat subtler.

In this film, Eisenstein portrays Ivan as a man with a dual nature - the ordinary, compassionate human being, versus the ambition-driven leader looking for his place in history.  In Part I, it is the former aspect of Ivan's nature that is dominant.  He is shown as a sympathetic hero, driven by honourable motives to bring about drastic changes to his country.  By the end of Part II, we see a totally different Ivan, a man who has been totally consumed by power and transformed into a monster. In one scene (the banquet sequence in which Ivan manages to thwart an assassination attempt), the Tsar looks like a primitive representation of the Devil; the garish colour photography, dominated by red, suggesting a scene from the very depths of Hell. Ivan even admits that, to be an effective leader, he has no recourse but to fight evil (namely his opponents) with evil.   The strongly opposing dialectic forces at work are the two sides of Ivan's nature (idealism versus power lust), which ultimately result in the creation of a tyrant.

Another dialectic conflict is the one between Ivan the man and Ivan the myth, seen most noticeably in a memorable sequence in Part I where Ivan the man is dominated by a huge shadow projected onto a far wall.  First we see Ivan the man dwarfed by a shadow of a globe.  Then, we see the shadow of Ivan, growing until it towers over both Ivan the man and, more crucially, the shadow of the globe.  The writing is on the wall, you might say.  Ivan is destined to become a man who will leave a huge imprint in the history of mankind.  But it is not the imprint he would have wished.

As the globe-and-man shadow play predicts, in the course of the two films, Ivan is gradually transformed from a likeable idealist into a brutal and calculating despot, totally devoured by megalomania.  The nobility and compassion of his youth give way to an obsessive need to control everything; he is suspicious of all around him and he soon loses his moral judgement.  The irony is that, without great power, Ivan cannot realise his noble ambitions, but once such power has been harnessed, he can only fail to put it to good use.  The conclusion: absolute power is ultimately useless.  Not quite the message that Josef Stalin and his cronies would have wanted to hear.

Film Synopsis

In 1547, the young archduke Ivan IV is crowned Tsar of Russia.  He pledges to build a strong and unified country, by reforming the church and the army, and by recovering lands that have been lost to foreign powers.  Ivan's plans enrage the wealthy court nobles, the boyars, who realise that their influence will now be vastly diminished.  Equally, they are opposed to Ivan's intention to marry the Romonov Anastasia.  After a successful campaign against the enemy state of Kazan, Ivan falls ill.   On his deathbed, the young Tsar entreats his nobles to swear allegiance to his infant son Dmitry.  They refuse.  Their intention is that Ivan will be succeeded by his retarded cousin, Vladimir, enabling them to regain their power.  When Ivan recovers, Anastasia is poisoned.  The death of his beloved wife so affects Ivan that he feels compelled to abdicate...