1. 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. 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.

2. Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible Part II: The Politics
December 1945: Part II completed and submitted to Mosfilm authorities.
16 January 1945: Part I released in Moscow.
January 1946: Part I receives Stalin Prize.
2 February 1946: Part II reedited and submitted to Committee on Film Affairs for approval. At celebratory party Eisenstein has heart attack.

3. Politics 7 February 1946: Film viewed by Artistic Council.
5 March 1946: Central Committee prohibits release of Part II because of its “ahistorical and inartistic qualities.”
August and September 1946: Central Committee criticism made public.
25 February 1947: Eisenstein and Cherkasov have interview with Stalin. Permission given to remake Part II and complete Part III.

4. Politics
29 November 1947: United Nations approves creation of State of Israel.
Stalin’s campaign against “cosmopolitism”
10 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 heart attack.
1 September 1958: Ivan the Terrible, Part II finally released.

6. Complexity and subtleness of editing, change of plans, camerawork, visual representation, sound and music; symbolism. Enclosed space and dream-like quality, as opposed to the open horizon, prevalence of outdoor scenes and “realism” in Aleksandr Nevski
According to a referendum held among film critics (1978), the eighth best of hundred best films in history of world cinema.

7. 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.”

8. Shooting Ivan the Terrible

9. Eisenstein’s drawing of Ivan for Part II

10. Koschei The Deathless (in Russian folklore, tsar of dark powers)

11. Viktor Vasnetsov Ivan the Terrible (1897)

12. Ivan as a youth

14. Eisenstein’s drawing of Ivan (“Le Roi Soleil,” “Sun King”)

15. “Sun King” (Part I)

17. Prince Kurbski, “the negative of Ivan”

18. Kurbski the traitor

19. Fiodor Basmanov

20. Fiodor Basmanov

22. Maliuta Skuratov

23. The tsar’s aunt

25. Symbolism: The single eye on the icon stands for truth

26. Efrosinia and the dead body of Vladimir

27. Ivan and Anastasia

28. A hero – masses contrast in Aleksandr Nevski (repeated in Ivan the Terrible)

29. People’s choice

30. Ivan and the people

31. Nosferatu by Friedrich Murnau (1922)

33. Shooting Ivan the Terrible

34. Shooting Ivan the Terrible