Ivan the Terrible and I go back a long way. I don’t even remember exactly when I first saw the films, or at least parts of them—I seem to recall seeing at least the color sequences in Part II on one of my father’s innumerable videotapes before seeing the rest of the film; I still have an impression in my mind of the final scene, where Ivan declares his intention to crush Russia’s foreign foes, which doesn’t quite jibe with the actual scene in the film, even though I’ve seen it many, many times. Criterion put out the Eisenstein: The Sound Years box set, containing Ivan and Alexander Nevsky, in April 2001, and we must’ve gotten it before long (we actually had a different edition of Nevsky originally, which I wish I’d held onto), because by my early teenage years I had the films in my grasp, and repeatedly rewatched my favorite scenes, namely the banquet sequence in Part II and the battle sequence in Nevsky.
I would later get a tape recorder and make mixtapes of my favorite pieces of film music, and the banquet scene, namely the “Dance of the Oprichniki” and Fyodor Basmanov’s song, was a particular favorite; I would later still get the scores for Nevsky and Ivan on CD (particularly helpful because the films themselves suffered from problematic sound recording), and listen to my favorite tracks over and over. There’s a reason I listed Prokofiev’s score for Ivan as the third greatest of all time (behind only Koyaanisqatsi and Lawrence of Arabia); it’s a piece of film music more dear to me than almost any other.
But there’s so much more to the films than even the glorious music. I hadn’t actually rewatched the films themselves in almost a decade (outside of rewatching a few favorite scenes), so there was plenty to rediscover in between the scenes long since burned into my memory. While I can see their shortcomings more clearly now (especially in Part I, which I continue to feel is the weaker of the two), there’s no question these are great films, stunning to behold and not a little worth contemplating for what they have to say about power, corruption, and ambition, even 75 years after they were made.
The saga begins in 1547 when Ivan (Nikolai Cherkasov), the Grand Prince of Moscow, declares himself Tsar of All the Russias, announcing his intentions to centralize power under himself—taking that power away from the boyars, the network of reigning nobles whom he’s clashed with his whole life, after they poisoned his mother and made decisions in his name which enriched themselves and left Russia weak and fragmented. He also announces his plans to form an army to reclaim the lands to the east and west of Moscow, with those who do not fight in it paying for its operations. This incenses the boyars, especially Ivan’s aunt Efrosinia Staritsky (Serafima Birman), who wants to put her own, manipulable son Vladimir (Pavel Kadochnikov) on the throne.
Ivan marries Anastasia (Lyudmila Tselikovskaya), which damages his friendships with Prince Andrei Kurbsky (Mikhail Nazvanov), who is in love with her, and Fyodor Kolychev (Andrei Abrikosov), who wants to leave court and become a monk. But Ivan soon demonstrates his capacity as a leader by quelling a popular uprising one minute and the next responding to envoys from the Khanate of Kazan by whipping the crowd into a militaristic fervor. With Kurbsky’s help, the Russians conquer Kazan, but when Ivan rebukes Kurbsky for his treatment prisoners, the latter raises his hand—fortuitously blocking an arrow, but earning Kurbsky the permanent suspicion of Ivan’s new confidante, Malyuta Skuratov (Mikhail Zharov).
Ivan falls ill, begging the boyars to swear allegiance to his infant son should he die. They refuse, and Efrosinia tries to goad Kurbsky into swearing allegiance to Vladimir. He is tempted, especially by the prospect of getting to marry the widowed Anastasia (who rebukes him), but when Ivan rallies, he makes a show of swearing allegiance to the Tsarevich, and Ivan entrusts him to wage war in the west to secure the Baltic ports for Russia, even as elevates another new friend, Alexei Basmanov (Amvrosy Buchma), whose son, Fyodor (Mikhail Kuznetsov), worships the ground Ivan walks on.
As the Baltic wars drag on and the boyars refuse to fund them, Ivan elects to force them, and Efrosinia responds by covertly poisoning the ailing Anastasia. Ivan, unaware of the real cause of her death, is devastated, but his resolve is unshaken, even when news comes that Kurbsky has defected to the Polish. Ivan decides to make a show of retreating from Moscow, going into seclusion in the town of Alexandrov, while at the same time forming an “iron ring” around him of trusted men—chief among them Malyuta and Fyodor—which he calls the Oprichnina. His hope is that the people will come to Alexandrov and beg for his return, which they do—allowing him to claim that he now wields absolute power by the will of the people.
Kurbsky is ennobled by King Sigismund of Poland (Pavel Massaslky), who announces his own intentions to expand eastward, claiming the lands of western Russia for himself (with Kurbsky a key player in the operation), but Ivan’s return to Moscow puts these plans on hold.
Ivan, now surrounded by his fanatically devoted Oprichniki, is confronted by Fyodor Kolychev, now the monk Philip, who demands that Ivan share his powers with the boyars and allow him to intercede on the behalf of those he accuses. Ivan is reluctant (“I don’t accuse the innocent”), but desperate for friendship, relents, and makes Philip Metropolitan of Moscow. Malyuta protests that Ivan should not give away his power, and suggests he be allowed to execute the accused before Philip can do anything. Ivan agrees, and Malyuta soon executes several members of Kolychev family, to which Ivan replies, “Too few!” Meanwhile, Fyodor Basmanov forces Ivan to confront the possibility that Efrosinia poisoned Anastasia, which Ivan is loath to admit.
Enraged by the executions and urged on by Efrosinia, Philip has a pageant staged in the Moscow cathedral which compares Ivan to the tyrannical Nebuchadnezzar. Ivan, disgusted—and now inescapably convinced of Efrosinia’s guilt—declares that he will be what they say he is: “Terrible!” The boyars set yet another plot in motion, this time assigning Pyotr Volynets (Vladimir Balashov) to assassinate Ivan as he passes through the cathedral. Ivan then has Vladimir—who wants nothing to with Efrosinia’s ambitions for him—invited to a banquet, and she tells Pyotr to go with him; he will kill Ivan during the religious procession which follows.
At the banquet, Vladimir drunkenly admits his mother’s ambitions to Ivan, while Fyodor Basmanov spots Pyotr brooding in a corner, and deduces that something is up. Ivan has Vladimir dressed in his own royal robes, ostensibly as a joke, but when the bell tolls for prayer, he urges Vladimir to lead the procession into the cathedral. He does so, and Pyotr kills him instead; Efrosinia suffers a nervous breakdown and Ivan declares his internal enemies vanquished. The time has come to face those on the outside.
And so he would have done in Part III, but after embracing Part I, Stalin had qualms about Part II, especially the depiction of the Oprichniki, and it was shelved; shooting on Part III was halted and only a single scene survives (and a few stills), though we have the script, in which Ivan defeats Kurbsky and reaches the Baltic and Fyodor Basmanov executes his own father, who’s grown disgusted with Ivan’s increasing autocracy. Part III might’ve also had the director Mikhail Room playing Queen Elizabeth I in drag (or that may have been planned for Part II), but that was quashed by the authorities.
Part III stands as one of cinema’s most tantalizing might-have-beens, along with Eisenstein’s own Bezhin Meadow, ¡Que Viva Mexico!, and others, putting him up there with Orson Welles in terms of unrealized ambition—and I fully realize the eerie parallels between Mexico! and It’s All True, Welles’ own unfinished ethnographic anthology on Latin American themes, also later salvaged in some form by other hands. But there’s so much to admire in the two parts of Ivan that we have that, in the words of Robert Burns, “I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,/An’ never miss ’t!”
Of all Ivan’s virtues, the most overwhelming, and the easiest to praise, are the images and the music. Although the sets were executed by Iosif Shpinel, and the costumes by Leonid Naumov, with the cinematography by Andrei Moskvin (who did the interiors, which comprise most of Part I and almost all of Part II) and Eduard Tisse (who did the exteriors, mainly the battle of Kazan and the finale of Part I), it was Eisenstein’s own concepts they executed, guided by his copious sketches.
On the Criterion DVD, there’s a fine video essay I just rewatched called “Eisenstein’s Visual Vocabulary” by Yuri Tsivian, which touches on some of Eisenstein’s carefully composed images, full of allusions to and influences from classical art, religious iconography, the animal kingdom, and even psychoanalysis—but so dense is the film’s imagery that Tsivian can only scratch the surface. And he’s far from the only game in town; the film’s wealth of imagery has been analyzed at greater length and with more authority than I can offer. It might say enough, for the savvy viewer, to say that Eisenstein’s ornate aesthetic was very likely an influence on Parajanov; there are shots here of objects, icons, frescoes, and tableaux of human bodies arranged in stylized settings which clearly anticipate The Color of Pomegranates.
The sets are stunning at every moment, from the vast cathedral with its artificial sun-rays to Ivan’s throne room—with a Sun-headed figure (an angel of some kind?) stretching across the entire ceiling, its feet atop…the Moon? The Earth? Humanity?—to the bedrooms which seem carved out of the very Earth, to the incredibly artificial Polish court with its chess-board floor to all the low archways the characters must duck through and the decorations, sacred and secular, which encrust their spaces.
And the costumes, especially the intricate robes of the Russian court, are no less magnificent, especially when we get to see them in glorious color—but don’t overlook the ominous black garb of the Oprichniki, Efrosinia’s cowls which only enhance her fearsome was, the strange hinged glasses on the scheming Baltic ambassador, and of course, King Sigismund’s enormous ruff (and the generally Elizabethan garb of the Polish court). And don’t overlook the makeup and hairstyling, with Ivan’s gradually sharpening features (he and other major characters are heavily modeled on animals) and increasingly pointed beard, and the prodigious beards of the boyars, all of which are truly impressive.
But again, what makes the imagery the more impressive is how much symbolic weight all of it carries. And beyond the actual objects placed on the screen, it’s the way they are framed and lit by Moskvin and Tisse that underline Eisenstein’s intentions. In particular, the use of light and shadow is magnificent, with one of the film’s most famous shots showing Ivan’s shadow looming over that of his envoy to Elizabeth:
Moreover, the use of highly theatrical lighting to denote shifts of tone and mood is sparing but no less striking; Tsivian mentions some key examples, especially when Ivan is reflecting on his mother and her death, but my own favorite example comes in the banquet scene, when Alexei Basmanov argues that he and the rest of the “iron ring” are tied to Ivan by blood—“blood that has been shed”—and a flush of red light overwhelms Buchma’s face. It’s simple, but it’s awesome.
There are many other images to treasure: Kurbsky and Fyodor Kolychev pouring gold coins over Ivan at his coronation, Anastasia smiling with delight at the white swans used as decoration for the wedding feast (contrasted with Vladimir’s drunken fascination with the black swans brought out at the banquet), Ivan emerging from his tent at Kazan like a model on a runway (and Fyodor Basmanov’s awestruck reaction to seeing him, hinting at the homoerotic subtexts which will greatly deepen in Part II), Ivan, at Alexandrov, inclining his head in the foreground as the people’s procession stretches into the distance in the background, Ivan running his bejeweled fingers through the fur Anastasia lay under when she died, Fyodor’s demonically lit face looking down on him, the candlelit funeral for the executed Kolychevs, with a Horseman of the Apocalypse placed significantly behind Archbishop Pimen (Aleksandr Mgebrov) as he goads Philip to move against Ivan, and…I’ll stop there.
I’ll turn to the score, that awe-inspiring score which I diligently burned into my memory long before I even dreamed of writing a film blog, that score I could sing whole swathes of, no matter my lack of musical training, singing voice, or command of Russian. I can’t really say in musical terms what it is about Prokofiev’s score that so inspires me, but I’ll do my best. (The Wikipedia article on the score helped a great deal, particularly in actually naming the various numbers.)
Both parts of the film begin with the sweeping, string- and brass-heavy “A Storm Approaches,” a theme which becomes associated with Ivan, the storm who will permanently alter the course of Russian history (“Someday a real tsar’s gonna come and wash all these boyars off the streets”), before segueing into the great, thunderous chorus “The Black Cloud,” which along with the textual prologue sets the scene for the Russia Ivan inherits and sets about imposing his will on. In the second film, this plays over a recap of Part I which also includes narrated video credits (helpful if you want to accurately pronounce the cast’s names), plunging us back into the intrigue after an interval of a few minutes or 13 years, as the case may be.
The coronation and wedding themes are fine, but the next great piece is “The Riot,” which accompanies the citizens’ uprising. The orchestration varies from one version to another, but the best versions are at a frantic pace, with hyperventilating horns, anxiously twittering winds, and turbulent strings. After he calms the uprising, we get the arrival of the envoys from Kazan, accompanied by the “Entrance of the Tatars,” with its delightfully sinuous winds—reprised to good effect when Kurbsky forces the prisoners to call for Kazan’s surrender, leading to Kazan’s archers mercy-killing them.
The battle itself comprises several first-rate cues; the martial chorus “The Cannoneers,” with its refrain of “Pushkali!,” at once stirs and suggests, with its percussive rhythm, the ordeals of marching, forging and dragging cannons, and pushing battle towers. But it’s the cues which follow, grouped together in the concert version of the score as “Forward to Kazan!,” which really thrill. “Kurbsky’s Trumpets” (a nice fanfare) is followed by the magnificently propulsive “Attack,” with its precariously ascending trumpets, like the whinnies of breathless horses, followed by a vigorous, surging theme for the strings, both of which alternate with a motif reminiscent of a folk dance. It reaches an ecstatic climax with “Kazan is Taken,” the brasses heralding the victory as the strings evoke the visual motif of swirling storm clouds. You really have to hear it for yourself (the best part begins about 5:40):
How did I forget about the drums? And the use of the winds? God, what a brilliant piece of music.
This is followed by the scenes of Ivan’s illness, the music for which is probably the least memorable in the film, although it’s still quite solid (it’s also my least favorite scene in the film, so I tend to gloss over all of it in my memory), with its pleading choruses. But the scenes of Anastasia’s illness and death by poisoning are masterfully accompanied, first by the intensely melodramatic strings of “The Poisoning of Anastasia” (a theme for court intrigue if I ever heard one), then by the devastating “Anastasia’s Illness,” with its plaintive winds and melancholy strings; it’s reprised when Efrosinia discovers Vladimir’s death, and it’s heartbreaking (she might have been a terrible person, but it’s damn hard not to feel bad at that point).
In the final scenes of the film, we have the ominous, dirge-like “Chorus of the Oprichniki,” followed by the exultant “Come back!,” which frames the finale, the other main element of which is the chorus pleading with Ivan to return to Moscow. It has a series of fanfares, with muscular themes on the winds in between, finally climaxing (especially in later renditions) in concert with the chorus and joyously ringing bells, to staggering effect. It does so to great effect at the end of both parts, each closing with Ivan dedicating himself to serving Russia.
In Part II, we get the satirically dry “Fanfares” which lead into the mockingly pompous “Polonaise,” obviously accompanying Kurbsky’s visit to the Polish court. This is surmounted, as the scene changes back to Russia, first by “A Storm Approaches” and then by “Orderly Dance,” which is really a pretty frenzied little piece with sprightly strings, anxiously punctuated by the vibraphone. It becomes one of the key musical motifs for the Oprichniki, especially when they spring into violent action.
As Ivan recounts his turbulent childhood, we get “The Poisoning of Glinskaya,” another theme rich with intrigue, with snaky winds and shadowy strings punctuated by drum and brass. It will also figure heavily in the story going forward, as a theme for the boyars’ machinations. It is closely linked with the piece Wikipedia calls “Shuysky and the Huntsmen,” which represents Ivan’s counterattacks, with bombastic drums and horns driving back the aforementioned winds; it is notably used, of course, when the young Ivan orders the arrest of a particularly hated boyar, who is swiftly executed.
The themes used during the “Fiery Furnace” pageant are fine, I’m sure, but the next piece that really grabs me is the “Song about the Beaver,” a lullaby Efrosinia sings to Vladimir. It’s less the musical element, however, but the lyrical element that compels me; she first sings about a black beaver bathing in a river, its fur darkening all the while, but then sings about it being pursued by hunters who want its fur…to make a hat…for Tsar Vladimir. When she reaches this point in the song, Vladimir understandably recoils with a howl; even in a seemingly tender moment he cannot escape his mother’s ambitions for his life. It is, of course, reprised to tragically ironic effect after his death.
What comes next is the banquet, and I’ll discuss that whole sequence shortly. But you’ll notice thus far that I’ve said very little about the acting and not much about the writing. But that’s because Eisenstein, Prokofiev, Moskvin and Tisse, and the rest of the technicians are arguably the film’s real stars, with the actors often serving more as figures to populate the tableaux than performers in the standard sense. And the writing itself is distinctly overshadowed by the imagery; there are compelling speeches and exchanges, but there’s also a fair amount of generic exposition and propagandistic ranting.
At one time (15 years ago or so) I considered Cherkasov’s performance one of the greatest in film history, but going back to it, it’s just not quite on that level. Especially in Part I, it’s sometimes clear that he and the other actors struggle with Eisenstein’s incredibly stylized conception. His precisely composed images and motions may be rich with meaning, but that doesn’t make them easier to play, and in Part I, you can sense the effort to make it look seamless. Ivan’s sickbed sequence, with Cherkasov wandering around the room, pleading with the boyars as they pointedly turn away from him, and dramatically flinging himself down in exhaustion, just doesn’t quite come off. You could read it as Ivan exaggerating his illness to gauge the reactions of those around him, but if that was the intent, it still doesn’t land like it should.
Cherkasov also wobbles in the early scenes of Part I—especially since he was pushing 40 and playing Ivan at 17—but he gradually finds his element as Ivan ages and matures; he’s properly commanding and sly when he takes control of the rebellious mob, and as his ambitions grow in concert with his moral ambiguity, his performance likewise grows in effectiveness. By the end of Part I, as his shameless gambit to gain “the will of people” pays off, he settles into his groove. And in Part II, he’s consistently strong, with his hypocrisies, his machinations, his darkly manipulative nature, his constant scheming, and his ambiguous moments of tenderness and alarm coming through as intended. It’s a fine performance, just not the all-time great piece of work I once acclaimed.
The other performers do generally solid work within the parameters of Eisenstein’s conception. Birman, her sharp features emerging from a cowl at all times, is an implacably wicked Efrosinia, a Wicked Witch of Muscovy who only melts spiritually at the end. Zharov has an effective arc as Malyuta, first a boisterous peasant, then a cynical ally, a proletarian counterpoint to the bourgeoisie of the court, and finally a bloody lackey who knows when to lop off some heads and when to rebuke others for being hypocritical worms (like Kurbsky) or for getting too ambitious for their own good (like Alexei Basmanov). And Kadochnikov’s Vladimir, especially in Part II, is a poignantly pathetic fellow who just wants to “live and drink in peace,” and his antics at the banquet (when Ivan asks who the boyars want to put on the throne, he drunkenly snorts and says “You’ll never guess!”) are quite amusing. It makes his final fate the more tragic.
The others make greater or lesser impressions based on what the material allows. Buchma is solid, especially as Alexei’s discontent grows in Part II, but I wish he had more to do. Nazvanov is a properly haughty and vain Kurbsky, though I can’t unsee Michael Medved’s comparison of him to Gene Wilder (Medved may have been laughably wrong in listing this as one of The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, but he made a good point there). Tselikovskaya is suitable as a figure of radiant virtue, but she doesn’t get to do much in the way of acting. Kuznetsov, likewise, doesn’t get a great deal to do much of the time besides look longingly or otherwise dramatically at Ivan (in many ways, he supplants Anastasia, and yes, I’m implying there’s a homoerotic element at play), but he does get some good material in Part II. Abrikosov and Mgebrov do adequately with what they have.
As for the writing, what stands out most to me are the ways in which Eisenstein seemed to be subtly critiquing Stalinism even in the Stalin-approved Part I. When Ivan refutes the mob’s claims of witchcraft, we have a couple of commoners talking about how Ivan’s “pretty sharp” and “no one pulls the wool over his eyes!”—lines so on-the-nose the modern viewer has to chuckle. And when Ivan openly declares his intention to withdraw from Moscow, so the people can beg him to return, you have to wonder what Stalin thought of the shameless populism on display. Maybe he just found it clever. Or maybe he felt the ends justified the means regardless.
The parallels between the rise of the Oprichniki and Stalin’s purges are more obvious and probably more extensively discussed (Stalin or his henchmen suggested the Oprichniki were depicted like Klansmen, which is an odd assertion) elsewhere, so instead I’ll offer this wonderful little riff I inadvertently prompted the other day, written by my friend Cameron Summers, who co-writes the excellent Broken Hands Media blog (which I strongly recommend checking out for its social/cultural commentary):
We’re going to beat the Hanseatic League and the dirty Tatars, it’s going to be beautiful, it’s going to be a huge victory, we’re going to win so hard that we get sick of winning and we’re going to sack Novgorod, going to put those Nizhegorodians to the sword because they’re bad hombres, and they fling cans of borscht at you, because a brick, a brick is too heavy, but a can of borscht you can throw a lot harder because it’s so light. And when you ask the Nizhegorodians what they have there they play so innocent, they just say “this? It’s just borscht, borscht for my family.” We’re going to send the cossacks in there and have the Nizhegorodians ripped apart by dogs.
Everyone calls me names, they say “Ivan, you’re terrible, Ivan, you’re a monster, Ivan, you have to abdicate the throne because of the fact that you embezzled from the aristocracy and clergy in 1564. If the Boyar court convicts me, maybe I won’t get to be your Tsar anymore, maybe I’ll have to establish a second kingdom within the borders of the former Novgorodian republic called Oprinchnina and use it as a base to purge the aristocracy and establish autocratic imperial control over Russia.
His riff, of course, draws parallels not between Ivan and Stalin but between Ivan and Trump, and while I’d readily describe Ivan as the more capable and intelligent leader, it’s not hard to see the film’s continued relevance. And no, I didn’t make a point of rewatching these films in connection with the election, but it worked out very nicely indeed.
In terms of character and narrative, the film tends to be rough around the edges; again, Part II has the edge, in part because it covers much less time—it feels like a few months at most, while Part I covers about 17 years. Both parts have extended scenes which seem to encompass more time than you would initially expect; most notably, in Part I Ivan and Anastasia’s wedding feast is interrupted by the citizens’ uprising, and once Ivan quells that, the envoys from Kazan arrive and Ivan responds with a call to arms. Either that’s one eventful evening, or Eisenstein took some creative license.
Part II has the scene where Ivan’s return to court leads to his conversation with Philip, his reminiscence of childhood, his capitulation to Philip’s demands, Malyuta’s bloody suggestion, Fyodor pushing Ivan to deduce who poisoned Anastasia, and finally the execution of the Kolychevs. Again, a busy day, but it feels like less of a stretch. Part II, which is subtitled The Boyars’ Plot, also benefits from focusing more on Ivan’s contention with this specific plot against his life and throne, whereas Part I has Ivan grappling with the boyars, Kazan, Kurbsky, and his European opponents. It just works better as a film, even if it needs Part I to establish the story and characters.
Not that the characters are so incredibly dimensional; they are, by and large, archetypes, from the determined, patriotic, ruthless Ivan to the haughty, opportunistic Kurbsky to the cold-blooded, manipulative Efrosinia and so on. Even more than its story and themes, the characterization of Ivan is heavily rooted in the aesthetic, with the heightened facial expressions, dramatic lighting, ornate costuming, and theatrical makeup carrying more weight than the actual dialogue.
And all of these elements, visual, verbal, and musical, culminate in that banquet sequence, that riot of color and music and symbolism that has captured my imagination for so long:
That clip removes all the dialogue to focus solely on the singing and dancing, but those are quite enough to justify my enduring enthusiasm. Just consider what we get in those few minutes: exciting, athletic, imaginative choreography; boldly styled cinematography with incredibly vivid reds and golds; homoerotic subtext a-plenty as Fyodor Basmanov, in drag, camps up a storm; a trio of Oprichniki grooving like they’re the Monkees or some such; Fyodor inventing dabbing and breakdancing decades ahead of time; a memorable song which combines the Oprichniks’ revels with their bloody hatred of the boyars; and throughout, Prokofiev’s magnificent music, so full of excitement and madness and invention.
It’s the kind of scene which, as a boy fascinated by early color cinema, keenly appreciative of film music (especially that which you can dance to), deeply impressed by the bold vision on display, and profoundly fascinated by the obscure and unusual, took hold of my imagination and has never really let go. In my book, it is one of the miracles of the cinema, and if it had no other virtues, it would be enough to make Ivan worth seeing. But it has so many.
Part I: 89/Part II: 93
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