Ivan the Terrible

**Release date(s)** | December 1944 (Part 1)

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       December 1958 (Part 2)

 **Running time** | 187 minutes

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       99 minutes (Part 1)
       88 minutes (Part 2)

 **Starring** | Nikolai Cherkasov

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Ivan the Terrible is a two part epic film by Sergei Eisenstein commissioned by Joseph Stalin  as a propaganda film about Ivan IV of Russia . The film was made in two parts, with Part I released in 1944 and Part II released 14 years later following the death of Joseph Stalin and 10 years after the death of Eisenstein. While Part I was highly acclaimed by Stalin himself, Part II received harsh criticism due to its unheroic-like portray of Ivan IV and banned from release until after Stalin's death in 1953.

## Overview

Ivan IV has just been coronated as Tsar of Russia and has the desire to put an end to the outside aggressive forces and the inside aggressive forces (the boyars). Fighting against the powerful boyars and the forces of Kazan, Ivan IV is met with many hardships that cost him his trust in those around him and the life of his beloved Tsarina. By creating a secret force of guards to protect him from those that lurk in the shadows, Ivan IV hopes to restore peace inside and around medieval Russia.

## Themes

Themes to consider for research:

* Russian Orthodoxy in *Ivan the Terrible*
* Portrayal of the characters as animals
* Soviet propaganda with iconic Russian historical figures
* Black and white and montage to represent Ivan's personality
* Shadow and shade as shown in the cinematography
* Melodrama in Soviet cinema
* Oprichnina in *Ivan the Terrible*
* Government censorship in Soviet cinema
* The Dance of the Oprichniki

## Film Criticism

"Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible stages Ivan’s revolutionary state centralization as an inherently contradictory drama in which Ivan-the-preyed-upon becomes Ivan-the-predator, replicating similarly widespread and archetypal revenge dramas in which the historically progressive move is always shadowed by a degree of inescapable, underlying violence."

- Joan Neuberger's Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible as History

"Ivan does not actually know until Part 2 that it is Evrosinia who murdered Anastasia (though the viewer knows this when it occurs). In this part there is more bloodshed than in Part 1 and, though the script periodically stresses that Ivan’s primary commitment is to national unity, his motives of personal revenge seem more operative in driving the plot."

-Katerina Clark's Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible and the Renaissance: An Example of Stalinist Cosmopolitanism?

"A similar transformation, complicated by a gender shift, happens to Eisenstein’s Ivan. The Tsar’s affairs go wrong after his swan-like wife Anastasia dies and is, according to Eisenstein’s notes, replaced by an ‘ersatz’-Anastasia (Eizenshtein 1971: 512) in the shape of the handsome oprichnik Fedor Basmanov, clothed in black. Unsurprisingly, when it comes to the nocturnal all-male feast, with the oprichniki dancing around Fedor, who sports a mask mocking Anastasia, the main course on the menu is served: swans again, but now black."

- Daria Khitrova's Eisenstein's choreography in Ivan the Terrible

## Watch the Film Here

Part 1

Part 2