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Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Grozny - 1944) - part 1 -

Ivan the Terrible is the first part of what was to become a monumental trilogy on the history of the first Tsar of Russia. There remains only the first and second film: Return of the boyars.
Unfortunately the third party did not see never be completed after the untimely death of the director only 50 years. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, who had met the objections of the Stalinist regime, was able to complete the first two parts of the work to modern culture and to give two of the most important masterpieces of cinema.

Ivan the Terrible

AJ Golovin, Portrait of Feodor Chaliapin in the role of Boris Godunov (1912)

Eisenstein loved the painting and all arts. Through analysis and study of the paintings he interpreted the various opportunities to develop intellectually and visually the film composition.

"(...) I love most of all the staging. The staging in the strict sense is the combination of the elements of space-time when individuals perform on stage.
I've always been fascinated with the process in which independent lines of action are interwoven with their own individual laws that regulate the tone of the rhythmic patterns of movement and space, transforming them into a single whole full of harmony. " Sergei M. Eisenstein

The beautiful shots of Ivan the Terrible, refer to the pictorial tradition of the best models of Russian painters of late nineteenth century.

Ivan the Terrible

The sequences of the presumed death of Ivan and the real death that affects his wife Anastasia, follow exactly the atmosphere suggestive of the paintings of Scharz Grigorjewitsch, with a clear reference to the work in which depicts the death of Ivan's son murdered by her father. Eisenstein uses the framework to achieve the staging of the set, the candles around the coffin, from the frescoes that cover the walls of the church to the drapery that cascade over the coffin.

Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Terrible

When you change the perspective of the figures, but the director keeps the same posture of the characters portrayed in the painting. Copy and translates to the screen the gestures of the protagonists of the paintings, subject to the rules of temporal narrative film.

Wjatscheslaw G. Schwarz, Ivan the Terrible near his son who murdered (1864)

Ivan the Terrible

near Ivan the Terrible, who murdered his son (detail)

Several shots were originally popular Russian iconography. The sequence that sees the spokesman to communicate to the people of Tsar Ivan the desire to temporarily leave Moscow, comes from some paintings of the so-called itinerant painters, witnesses of the historical traditions of their country. The horizontal cut of the frame is the same as the painting of Schwarz, on the background you can see the church of San Pietro Burgo attached with other churches.

Ivan the Terrible


Wjatscheslaw G. Schwarz, Palm Sunday in Moscow ... (1865)

Ivan the Terrible

Boris Godunov, (1913)

The final scene sees the Tsar Ivan the faithful observe that beg for his return in Moscow. Eisenstein used the painting of Vasnezov. Proposes the imposing figure of the Tsar through the interpretation of the actor Nikolai Cherkasov.

Ivan the Terrible


Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov , Ivan IV the Terrible (1897)