Ivan the Terrible Part 1 & 2 (1944) Review

Title: Ivan the Terrible I & II
Year: 1944
Director: Sergei Eisenstein 
Country: USSR
Language: Russian

Ivan the Terrible was a personal hero of USSR premier Joseph Stalin. He commissioned Sergei Eisenstein to make a film of the Sixteenth Century Grand Prince of Moscow. This production would be filmed during World War Two at the Alma Ata studios in Kazakhstan. Part I was met with great acclaim, but Stalin detested Part II & it was surprised until the dictator's death. 

Part 1: 
During the early part of his reign, Ivan the Terrible (Nikolay Chersov)  faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people.

Part II:
As Ivan the Terrible attempts to consolidate his power by establishing a personal army, his political rivals, the Russian boyars, plot to assassinate their Tsar.

Both films are epic in scale and remarkable in visuals. Eisenstein has a keen eye for close-ups, making his film resemble Carl Th. Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc. Ivan the Terrible is shot as a towering, powerful figure whereas his opponents are a managerie of eerie, judging faces. 

The architecture does a tremendous job at demonstrating how cold and calculated the antagonists, the boyars, are. Angled exaggerated walls, vaulted ceilings and pointed arches add to the films' drama & heightened sense of dread. 

The set design by Iosif Shipnel deserves a great amount of praise, as does the costume design, highly theatrical lighting and brilliant score. The visual vocabulary of Ivan The Terrible draws upon religious iconography, classical art, and psychoanalysis. The use of visual symbolism is remarkable - almost every modern filmmaker owes a debt to Eisenstein for inventing new cinematic languages. 

The writing is overshadowed by the imagery, but it's still quite impressive. The film's narrative is nail-biting, almost Shakespearean in the way it depicts the turmoil between Ivan and the Boyars. The characters are heavily rooted in the film's aesthetic. The costuming, lighting, theatrical makeup all are more important than the dialogue. 

I found myself incredibly impressed by these films. Style and substance mix for a masterwork of World Cinema. Eisenstein is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and Ivan the Terrible is proof of this.