Ivan the Terrible, Part I

The fulminating titles go into Mann's Reign of Terror, properly understood as a tale of gangs. Crowned in the cathedral, showered with coins, "the tsar of all Russia" (Nikolay Cherkasov) has a vision: "Two Romes have fallen. Moscow is the third. There will be no fourth." The "uncircumcised infidels" at the Siege of Kazan prove less malignant than the foes within, the aristocratic boyars alarmed at the young firebrand determined to upend the old feudal order. The bearish plebeian (Amvrosy Buchma) pledges loyalty while the wide-eyed prince (Mikhail Nazvanov) woos the ruler's bride (Lyudmilla Tselikovskaya), who succumbs to the tainted chalice presented by the witchy aunt (Serafima Birman). Paranoia festers, the solution is "a ring of iron, a circle of spears pointing towards the enemy." His baroque side unchained, Sergei Eisenstein transforms the historical hagiography commissioned by Stalin into a belated follow-up to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Ornate suffocation reigns—a profusion of robes and furs and candles in windowless chambers where people have to stoop before entering or exiting through arched portals. (The solitary outdoors view finds a battlefield abstracted into lined cannons and Tartar prisoners arrowed like Saint Sebastian figurines.) Scheming and skulking are full-time occupations in this realm, Ivan mutates accordingly into an El Greco figure, his elongated noggin armed with a beard that, as Groucho would say, might go off at any moment. "I am in the currents of the flood, and its current bears me away." The collapsing column at the Byzantine funeral, the darting eye under the leaden tome, the throb of human madness behind every congealed fresco. The tsar's revivification is where Eisenstein notes the junction of Young Mr. Lincoln and Nosferatu. "By the people's summons, I shall gain limitless power." Part II, purge time. Welles' critique from his New York Post column continues in Macbeth, Othello, Chimes at Midnight... Cinematography by Eduard Tisse and Andrei Moskvin. With Mikhail Zharov, Pavel Kadochnikov, Mikhail Kuznetsov, Andrei Abrikosov, Aleksandr Mgebrov, and Vsevolod Pudovkin. In black and white.