The first part of Eisenstein’s ultimate film, ("Ivan Groznyj") ends and the second begins at the moment of triumphant vindication, with the masses of Muscovites in a seemingly endless line stretching across the snow to the horizons beseeching the czar (Nikolai Cherkasov) to return. The profile of the already semi-deranged car with his preternaturally pointed and stiff beard just into the side of the frame, as the czarist anthem rises from the people.

Although the people love their despot (in this telling), his closest friends have become enemies. Kurbsky (Mihail Narvanov), the one Ivan had made the commander of his army in the Tartar war, has been defeated and gone over to the Poles, and the first new material in Part Two takes place in the Polish court of Sigismund (Pavel Massalsky, in an extreme ruffed collar) with Kurbsky surrendering his sword and being handed it back, before news of the Czar arrives. This sequence is fairly extraneous, setting up a war that was the center-piece of Part Three, which was never completed. It does, however, show how alone the great Czar is.

There is a flashback (footage shot for Part One, but cut at the insistence of Stalin himself) of Ivan as a lonely child as his mother is poisoned and corrupt regents acting in his name sell out Russian sovereignty. There is a poignant shot of a miserable adolescent on a throne too high for his legs to reach the floor, and a declamation like the one following his coronation (at the beginning of Part One) about restoring the power of the motherland and making Moscow the "third Rome" (Byzantium/Constantinople the second, having fallen to the "infidel" Ottomans).

The prematurely aged and heartbroken czar is again very lonely. His beloved wife as poisoned by his power-hungry aunt Euphrosinia (Serafima Birman). His other good friend from before he married went into a monastery, formerly Fyodor, now Archbishop Philip (Andrei Abrikosov). When recalled to court by Ivan, he not only challenges the czar in public but is involved in plotting against his life with Euphrosinia and the other disaffected boyars (the feudal owners of land and serfs). Who is a czar with modernizing program to trust? Certainly not those who consider themselves his peers and resent his monopolizing power. (My guess is that Eisenstein thought that Ivan’s enemies would be identified as aristocratic enemies of the communists, but Stalin himself may have noticed the analogy to his own purge of other leaders of the Bolshevik revolution and ensuing civil war as he took control of every aspect of life in the Soviet Empire, including banning work by Bulgakov and Eisenstein.)

The boyars’ plot in scenes as dramatically and expressionistically lit as the court scenes. Throughout both parts of "Ivan the Terrible," Eisenstein cuts from grim face to grim face (mostly not talking heads, but reaction shots, though the reactions are mostly harsh impassiveness). Eisenstein had been the theorist of montage in the silent-film epoch, and the exaggerated (expressionistic?) acting in "Ivan" strikes me as a holdover from silent-film-style acting (see, for instance, Dovshenko’s Earth).

"Ivan the Terrible, Part Two" is sometimes labeled "The Boyar’s Plot." The plot and Ivan’s plan to foil it are the main dramatic action in Part Two. After the confrontation in the cathedral, an assassin exalted with belief that he is God’s instrument to strike down the apostate (anti-Christ?) czar is enlisted. Euphrosinia’s dim-witted son, Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky (Pavel Kadochnikov), whom she is striving to make Ivan’s successor, is unhappy with the plan to slay his cousin and justifiably frightened of becoming czar, but Euphrosinia’s ambition is not about to be deterred by qualms or consideration of his wishes.

Ivan invites (summons) Vladimir to a banquet. The banquet is somewhat bacchanalian (which no doubt offended the prudish Stalin) and was filmed in color (using some color film stock captured from the Germans). In previous viewings of "Ivan the Terrible" (both in theaters and on video), I was disconcerted by the introduction of color. Seeing a better preserved or restored version — or perhaps having just seen the original "Phantom of the Opera," which also has a fête in color and also emphasizes red — I was not disconcerted. I still don’t know what to make of the song and dance in drag of Ivan’s most trusted lieutenant (I’ll get to the oprichniki…), the very photogenic Mikhail Kuznetsov
as Fyodor Basmanov.

Without too much difficulty, Ivan gets Vladimir drunk. Vladimir warns him of a plot and repeats that he does not want to be czar. Given Eisenstein’s stress on Ivan’s loneliness, one might expect Ivan to be touched by such guileless friendship. However, earlier in Part Two, Ivan realized that it was Euphrosinia who poisoned his wife, and he is certainly aware that she is a leader of the plot against him and plans to install her son on his throne. Ivan presents the idea to Vladimir of dressing up in the regalia of the czar as a game. Vladimir is easily amused, and only realizes the danger of his disguise when Ivan insists that Vladimir remain in czar costume and lead the procession of revelers to a midnight mass in the adjoining cathedral. Vladimir’s slow but complete realization is brilliantly and wordlessly performed by Pavel Kadochnikov.

The cathedral is another expressionsist set of towering pillars and looming shadows. The assassin strikes what looks like the czar. An ecstatic Euphrosinia rushes over to gloat over the corpse. There is another slow but complete realization when Ivan emerges from the crowd. She does not go histrionically crazy as one might expect, but cradles the corpse of her son and sings a lullaby. Ivan, too, is restrained, and thanks the assassin for removing his rival (the assassin is shown in a bare-chested crucified composition that recurs in Eisenstein films). The great project of centralizing state power is triumphant, but enemies real and imagined remain plentiful and the parallel between Ivan’s reign of terror and Stalin’s, and, particularly, the reliance on a secret police loyal to the autocrat (the oprichniki recruited from those with correct (non-aristocratic) backgrounds and led by the Basmanovs, father and son) was too obvious for Part Two to be approved for distribution by the modern and very terrible Ivan, Josef Stalin. The guile of Eisenstein;s Ivan is impressive, but, unlike Part One, which I believe is the pinnacle of fascistic art, Part Two cannot be seen as an indirect glorification of Stalin. It is difficult not to see a critique of absolutism (and mass murder) in it. Certainly, Stalin himself didn't miss it!

Most of what had been shot of Part Three (in which the oprichniki apparently ran even wilder and started turning on each other at Ivan’s instigation) was destroyed, and Part Two was not released until 1958, five years after Stalin’s death, ten after Eisenstein’s.

I will readily grant that the film does not always proceed smoothly, though the central arc of plot and plot-foiling is brilliantly realized. The film is also in Russian, and most of it is in black and white. It is very, very far from being a feel-good film. The subject matter is very dark and there are reasonable qualms about making a monster even somewhat sympathetic (though Ivan is notably less glorified in Part Two than in Part One). Like "Ran," the culmination of the career of Akira Kurosawa, another transcendent master of cinema-making, "Ivan the Terrible" takes a long hard look at the abyss of power, tyranny, and loyalty. "Ivan" is a movie that it is hard to like, but hard not to admire for its vision of destructive power and for the striking visual compositions, stylized but affecting acting, and the superb musical score by Sergei Prokofiev.



Recommended:
Yes