IVAN THE TERRIBLE (II)

POLITICS, THEMES, VISUALITY, MOTIFS

Ivan the Terrible Part I

Deals with the idea of absolute power granted by God in order to “gather lands” and restore Russia’s grandeur.

Events: Ivan’s early years, coronation, marriage and death of the wife, Kurbski’s treason, victory over the Tartars, Ivan’s demonstrative reclusion and the people of Russia pleading him to return

Released in 1945, approved by critics and by Stalin, received Stalin award.

Shooting Ivan the Terrible

Ivan the Terrible Part II:The Film and Politics

December 1945: Part II completed and submitted to Mosfilm authorities.

January 1945: Part I released in Moscow.

January 1946: Part I receives Stalin Prize.

February 1946: Part II reedited and submitted to Committee on Film Affairs for approval. At celebratory party Eisenstein has a heart attack.

The Film and Politics

February 1946: Film viewed by Artistic Council.

March 1946: Central Committee prohibits release of Part II because of its “ahistorical and inartistic qualities” and Ivan being “weak like some Hamlet.”

August and September 1946: Central Committee criticism made public.

February 1947: Eisenstein and Cherkasov have interview with Stalin. Permission given to remake Part II and complete Part III.

The Film and Politics

November 1947: United Nations approves creation of State of Israel.

Stalin’s antisemitic campaign against “cosmopolitism” (Eisenstein was a member of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee).

January 1948: Jewish actor and theatre director Solomon Mikhoels, president of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, murdered by NKVD in Minsk, the start of the “struggle with cosmopolitanism.”

11 February 1948: Eisenstein dies after a heart attack.

March 1953: Stalin dies.

1 September 1958: Ivan the Terrible, Part II finally released.

Ivan The Terrible Part II

Juxtaposition of images relying on viewer’s memory;

Complexity and subtleness of editing;

Change of plans, elaborate camerawork;

Visual representation and symbolism based on archetypes, painting, animals;

Theatre and biomechanics;

Sound and music; frescoes as visual parallels to Prokofiev’s music;

Enclosed space and dream-like quality, as opposed to the open horizon, prevalence of outdoor scenes and “realism” in Aleksandr Nevski

Psychoanalysis

Symbolism: Single Eye

Symbolism: Single Eye

Dead Vladimir Ivan on deathbed

Motifs: Child, Goblet, Swans, etc.

Visual “Rhymes”

Visual “Rhymes”

Underlying eroticism (revealed in the sketches)

Visuality

Kurbsky between good and evil, light and darkness

Geometry: lines and shapes

Theatricality

Theatre inside the film: a mystery play about three infant martyrs in the fiery furnace.

Fiodor Basmanov replacing Anastasia: a sinister turn

Eisenstein’s drawing of Ivan for Part II

Koschei The Deathless (in Russian folklore, sovereign of dark

powers)

Andei Tarkovski about Ivan The Terrible

“There is a film, Ivan The Terrible by Eisenstein, that is as remote as possible from the principles of direct observation, - not only is the film as a whole a hieroglyph, it entirely consists of a series of hieroglyphs, large, small and tiny, there is not a single detail in it that is not saturated with authorial design or intention.”