5/5 History is no match with this masterpiece
  by Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
This double film is a masterpiece in many ways. It took two years of research before starting to come out of thin air and being filmed. The first part came out in 1944 and the second part in 1945. This means the research was done when the USSR was down under the feet of the nazis. The first part came out when the tide had turned and the Russians were already advancing in Poland. The second part came out after the fall of Berlin or close before. The political meaning at the time was clear. The first part was singing the praise of the man who unified Russia, just like it was necessary in the war years to reunify the USSR for the last push to Berlin. The second part is slightly different since it was the time when Ivan the Terrible had to face the plots and conspiracy from the Boyars, the nobles and the top echelon church people and he had to defeat them with wise schemes more than just plain violence. That was of course essential after the war to face the various groups of people who could have spoken out of unity now the outside danger was eliminated. But we have to go beyond this immediate and historical value of the film when it was shot. It is a masterpiece because Eisenstein uses rather simple means to produce an epic film whose every scene is poignant, powerful, impressive, etc. Eisenstein uses all the possibilities his know-how and experience provide him with. Of course he uses black and white to play on shade, shadows and contrast so that some scenes are frightening and quite in the line of the big masters of horror of the late 20s, Fritz Lang or Murnau. He uses the body language and the composition of the scenes and setting to make every single square centimeter meaningful and active. The hands, the faces, the bodies are among the best actors of the film along with the actors themselves, quite in the line of what Eisenstein was doing in the 20s, but even better because he was able to use their lips in order to make them speak. The soundtrack is prodigious. He composes a real symphony with voices used in the most dramatic and expressive way, with all kinds of sounds and noise that give a real depth to the pictures on the screen and the voices of the actors, and finally the outstanding music score by Prokofiev: probably one of the best film music ever and that music totally avoids the repetitiveness of the music of the old silent films to create a fully developed universe of its own that amplifies the voices and the sounds and noises. That creates the epic atmosphere the story itself needs. What's more, in the second part, the use of color for two reels of the film shows the force of the black and white reels, and at the same time shows how Eisenstein can use the color of these reels in order to create a different but similar contrast, this time centered on red dominating the various other colors that are essentially, white, black and yellow. The red of these reels becomes the expression of life and at the same time of some oppressiveness coming from some danger that red also designates (and surprisingly enough we cannot find any "revolutionary" meaning to that red, but we may be missing some inside meaning in the USSR of the time). The films have been digitally re-mastered but not in any way changed: we still have the jerky pictures of those days and the blurry sound track of before digital sound (even the music that could have been re-recorded). And it is good because we really have the impression to watch an old film from the 50s. By the way do not believe what the historical presentation of the bonuses tell you, in English, at least in my edition, because it is purely there to pacify those who may see Stalin behind Ivan.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID


3/5 Russian Film
  by Richard Mowbray (DC)
Very dark and brooding. I liked "Alexander Nevsky" much better. It had a sense of humor that the Ivans did not. Interesting costumes.

One has to wonder that the Europeans being such inept fops, why did Ivan work so hard to make Russia more like their countries, hmmm? Contradictions in propaganda films can be fun.

5/5 Shadow and light as stars
  by Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA)
Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible" is a visual experience not to be missed. The acting's not anything to write home about. Nikolai Cherkasov's portrayal of Ivan is so overdone that his extravagant gestures remind one of the silent film variety. Nor is the script a particularly good one. The two parts of the film are a bit disjointed.

But what IS excellent is the cinematography. It's not wide of the mark to say that the real stars of the film are the shadows and light. In this first part, we get a breathtaking preview of just what Eisenstein is capable of in the scene of the poisoned tsarina's funeral bier. Ivan's profile is situated in front of candlesticks in such a way as to suggest not only incredible loneliness but also destiny. We also see glimmers of the huge shadows cast by tiny humans trick that will dominate the second part. It's all really quite incredible.

Plot-wise, the first part of "Ivan the Terrible" sets the stage for Ivan's on-going power struggle with the boyars, the traditional aristocracy. It begins at his coronation, details the connivances of the boyars, led by Ivan's own aunt (a character that is especially one-dimensional), features Ivan's war against the Kazars, and crescendos with the poisoning of his beloved wife Anastasia. The emphasis throughout is the need for strong centralized leadership if the Russian Empire is to be saved from enemies east and west. Stalin loved it.

5/5 IVAN THE WONDERFUL I
  by Jeff Farrow
Despite having been produced over 60 years ago, IVAN THE TERRIBLE remains one of the most bizarre and compelling movies ever made. It is filmed in an ultra-expressionist style, despite the fact that expressionism had long passed its heyday in the 1920's and early 30's. Nonetheless, the style fits this almost gothic film perfectly. Religious and other symbols of power and authority are exaggerated, transformed into grotesques. The powerless peasantry, mired in the darkest ignorance, is presented as a frightening presence of menace, ever lurking in the background, waiting to be harnessed by the next tyrant. Ivan himself is depicted as an elongated, Nosferatu-type character with a moral compass so convoluted as to be nonexistent. The mixing of "song & dance numbers" under the most monstrous circumstances toward the end of Part II only enhances the mesmerizing quality of the film. It is said that Stalin attempted to pressure the director to make this masterpiece more "Stalinist friendly," but that the filmmaker courageously refused. Unfortunately almost all other films made during the Stalinist Era reflect the justifiably maligned, dreary style called "socialist realism."

[...]

5/5 Light and Shadow
  by Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States)
The movies "Ivan the Terrible" numbers 1 and 2 are a facinating example of the use of light and shadow which serves to enhance these stories of royal intrigue. I'm not well versed on Russian history so I don't know how much of the events described in these movies are facts and how much are Stanlinist revision. It was clear that the impact of the movies were designed to rally the besieged Russian people during the disaster that was WWII on the Eastern Front. The fact that the Russians prevailed didn't undo the catastrophic damage that was done to them. One might question how minimal that was compared to the death and societal destruction that Stalin wrought in the years leading up to the War. However, I digress from the movies themselves.

Not to pick on a master of the art of cinema, but there was one shortcoming to the two movies. Except for a battle scene in the first movie, the rest of the film was indoors. Given that the theme was the unification of Russia, it was a shame that we saw so little of it. I understand that the war had something to do with the available locations. However, it seemed odd to watch a tsar of Russia who appeared to be confined to a castle. It makes you wonder how all this unification happened if Ivan depended totally on others to go out and get things done.

What is great about these movies is the camera and lighting that I mentioned earlier (but it outstanding enough to mention again). I was also impressed by the meter of the dialogue. I kept looking for signs that the film had been slowed down somehow because there was always ample time to read the English subtitles. Eisenstein, who excelled in the silent movie era, used his dialogue effectively without overdoing it. There is a darkness to these movie (another plug on the excellent use of lighting) that excellently complements the events that are depicted. The two movies are similar to each other and it's a pity that the third installment never came to be. However, parts 1 and 2 are excellent examples of how the visual can amplify the audio.