Ivan the Terrible: Parts 1 and 2

Eisenstein, Sergei

For his final film, a two-part epic charting the reign of Russia’s first Czar, Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky) rejected the densely edited style of his silent masterpieces, and instead embraced techniques more reminiscent of German Expressionist cinema (a style he had previously dismissed, describing Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari as ’’a combination of silent hysteria, partially coloured canvases, daubed flats, painted faces, and the unnatural broken gestures and action of monstrous chimaeras’’)

Part 1 begins with Ivan’s coronation as Czar, and charts his rise to absolute power, backed by the will of the people. Part 2 shows Ivan becoming a brutal leader, tormented by paranoia and using the Oprichniki (his secret police) to enforce his will, a plot element which greatly offended Stalin and led to the film being banned for ten years.

With richly composed mise-en-scène, masterful use of light and shadow and a stunning score by Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible is a stunning vision.

Ei suomitekstiä. Ikäraja 12 Väkivalta Ahdistus.

Kustantaja: UKFilms
Sidosasu:
ean: 5060000500028