Ivan the Terrible (Artkino) is Part I of a three-part biography of Russia's first Czar (1530-84). It was written and directed by Sergei Eisenstein, one of the few men of genius who have made moving pictures. It is a great change and, many critics will feel, a great comedown from Eisenstein's early films, Potemkin, Ten Days That Shook the World, Old & New. Nonetheless it is obviously, and in every frame, the work of a great creative intelligence.
Ivan is the story of a ruler whose passion was to extend and unify a Russia dismembered among foreign enemies and predatory boyars; of the constant writhe of intrigue against him; of how he dealt with his enemies both foreign and domestic ; and of how the man and his policies changed in the process. Major scenes are Ivan's coronation; his destruction of the Tartar city of Kazan; his rising from his supposed deathbed to abash those who are plotting against his son's succession. Half mad with grief and self-doubt after his wife's murder and his best friend's treachery, Ivan abdicates. At the end of the picture, by request of the common people, he returns to the throne, confident of "everlasting rule." As Eisenstein tells it, this vindication of Ivan becomes, by many parallels, a vindication of Stalin and his regime.
Bigger than Life. In part because it concentrates on making its political points this film is as little like an ordinary movie as could be imagined. But Eisenstein, the artist, never gives way wholly to Eisenstein, the propagandist. Every movement in it is exciting, but, springing as it does against the tensions of near-standstill, it is exciting as if a corpse moved. Besides restricting motion in his movie, Eisenstein has also fought shy of realism. All of his characters, their faces and their gestures are superhuman rather than human. Most of the action takes place as closely within palace walls as if the cameras had been confined to a theater stage. The lighting, too, is closer to florid Russian theater than to cinema.
Aside from powerful composition and exquisite cutting, the chief cinematic device is a prodigal use of close-ups—but these are also used to enhance the anti-naturalism.
Whiter than History? Actually, the film is a visual opera, with all of opera's proper disregard of prose-level reality. As such, it is an extraordinarily bold experiment, fascinating and beautiful to look at. But Eisenstein has denied himself so much that is native to cinema and has concentrated so fiercely on political pedagogy that the film is also tiring and disappointing. It is saddening as well, when compared with his earlier films, which were not only more vigorous, free and poetic, but far more "revolutionary."