Ivan Groznyy I (1944)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Sergei M. Eisenstein

Writer:

Sergei M. Eisenstein (writer)

Release Date:

8 March 1947 (USA)

Genre:

Biography

Plot:

During the early part of his reign, Ivan the Terrible faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people.

Plot Keywords:

Power | Exile | Coronation | Russia | Tartar

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Nikolai Cherkasov	...	Czar Ivan IV
Lyudmila Tselikovskaya	...	Czarina Anastasia Romanovna
Serafima Birman	...	Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya
Mikhail Nazvanov	...	Prince Andrei Kurbsky
Mikhail Zharov	...	Czar's Guard Malyuta Skuratov
Amvrosi Buchma	...	Czar's Guard Aleksei Basmanov
Mikhail Kuznetsov	...	Fyodor Basmanov
Pavel Kadochnikov	...	Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky
Andrei Abrikosov	...	Boyar Fyodor Kolychev
Aleksandr Mgebrov	...	Novgorod's Archbishop Pimen
Maksim Mikhajlov	...	Archdeacon
Vsevolod Pudovkin	...	Nikola, Simpleton Beggar
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Pavel Massalsky	...	Sigismond - King of Poland
Sergei Stolyarov

Also Known As:

Иван Грозный (Soviet Union: Russian title)
Ivan the Terrible, Part One (USA)
Ivane Mriskhane, natsili pirveli (Soviet Union: Georgian title)

Runtime:

103 min | USA:95 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG | South Korea:15 | Portugal:M/6 | Finland:S | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Company:

Mosfilm

Trivia:

One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.

Goofs:

Continuity: Amount of coins in the bowls that are showered over Ivan at the end of the coronation scene.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Hitler - ein Film aus Deutschland (1977)

Eisenstein and sound - oil and water

The problem with this film is it is in sound and anyone who knows Eisenstein will know that he and John Gilbert were the two people most afraid of the element of sound in film. Basically with Ivan Groznyj parts one and two Eisenstein has tried to make a silent film with sound. No that's not a contradiction, well not for Eisenstein. Here is a man whose art has passed him by and he has never come to terms with it. The most impressive aspects of the film is its visuality which is often sublime but just as often fails to succeed because it is overlaid by sound which Eisenstein both ignores and neglects to varying degrees. Hence we have a film made in the 1940s which looks 20 years older with acting styles that are even more antiquated. Eisenstein, along with the likes of Pudovkin, resented the audio component of film because it detracted from the poetry of the visual image and would align film too closely with drama. He concluded the cinema would merely become a series of filmed plays. Eisenstein obviously believed his criticism for it is Ivan Groznyj I & 2 which betrays a theatricality that had long been overcome in mainstream American and English cinema. So Eisenstein merely uses his actors as props and stages the drama in broad strokes of sweeping gesture and concentrated stares. Not unlike the type of production one will see on the stage. Eisenstein was truly a poet but by the time he made this film cinema had progressed markedly. There were new and more gifted filmmakers doing more than he was now capable of as they embraced the devices at their disposal and set about crafting art with a subtlety and novelty in which he was sadly lacking.