Customer Reviews

Ivan the Terrible - Pt. 2 [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Right off the bat, it needs to be said that this is the older DVD version, not the new remastered Criterion Collection version. There are no extras in this DVD version by Image. The subtitles are black and white, and are difficult to read against the black-and-white film sequences. The excellent score by Prokofiev is tinny. The soundtrack was recorded in PCM, essentially a WAV file, which will not play on many older DVD players. The transition between the black and white sequences and the color sequences is not as smooth as it could be. The difference between the Image version and the Criterion version is one of quality and content, and price. The Criterion version comes as part of a boxed set, which is pricey if you already own Alexander Nevsky and/or Ivan Part I. If you don't already own Alexander Nevsky and/or Ivan I, the Criterion version is the way to go. If you do own it, then you have to decide whether to purchase the Image version and spend less money, or to replicate part of your film library with the 3 disk set from Criterion.

As to the virtues of this Eisenstein compared to other Eisenstein films or all other films, the pacing will be too slow and the posed acting will be too melodramatic for most American audiences raised on modern action flicks. Film lovers will get more out of it, however, because most of them will have the background to appreciate the preservation of the silent film acting style with all its posing, stance, pregnant pauses and charactured good guy/bad guy visual "leitmotifs." The historical background of the film will be missed by your average modern western audience, who would probably fail to sort the propagandizing of Soviet filmmaking from the dramatic touches and historical details. Overall, this is worthy film to watch because of its historical value, insight into the Soviet "social realism" school, hand-in-glove Prokofiev score and brilliant cinematography. The set-up for the final murder and the murder scene itself are great cinema, achieving the pacing and suspense that seem lacking in the first half of the film. Even though you know what is going to happen, the resolution is still satisfying and surprising. If anything, see this film for that. My three stars are really to rate this DVD version because of its tinny and grainy quality and hard-to-read subtitles. Better to spend you money to get the Criterion boxed set instead, even if you do end up replicating one or more Eisenstein's which you may already own.

This landamrk film keeps of course the acidity of his bitter significance around the brutal conflict, aroused by inner rivalries between Ivan and the Boyars who were directly involved with the assasination of his parents.

A monumental masterpiece that must be seen by all those who love the cinema.

Dark, depressing, very gloomy. Typical of Eisenstein's war time pieces. Worth seeing for the costumes. The philosophy that Ivan was a man-of-the-people over the interests of the other nobles is so Soviet era.

So asks a tormented Ivan in this second part of Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible." Ivan 2 is, I think, a better production than Ivan 1. The interplay of light and shadow that Eisenstein so masterfully achieves comes through here with splendid effect: Ivan, the out-of-control, lonely, isolated, and half-mad tsar is really a little man who casts a disproportionately large shadow. Eisenstein expresses this truth throughout the film with his camera shots and lighting. No wonder Stalin took such offence at the film, which didn't see the light of day until the Soviet Tsar of All the Russias died.

The Ivan in Part 2 is obviously crazy and power-hungry. But the viewer is able to sympathize just a little bit with him because he's so miserable. Nor are his adversaries much better. The religious authorities plot against him because they are jealous of his power--the Orthodox Metropolitan is described at one point as having a white cowl but a black soul--and Ivan's aunt Serifima, who's been his nemesis in both of the film's parts, is just as obsessed with power as Ivan.

Two magnificent scenes in Ivan 2 especially stand out: the accusatory skit in the cathedral, in which Ivan's excesses are "safely" denounced in a passion play, and the assassination of Ivan's half-witted cousin and the destruction of Serifima's schemes. They both really stand out as high points in the history of western cinema.

The theme throughout the film is that a sovereign should be good, but should be willing to take the path of evil if it's absolutely necessary for the survival of his nation--the "dirty hands" motif. Eisenstein's film is deliberately ambivalent in addressing the dirty hands issue, which was probably a coded criticism of Stalin.

The film is mostly in black and white. Towards the end, the film rolls over to color, and then in its final moments switches back to black and white. I don't think this is a deliberate artistic decision so much as a technical issue.

This is the last, and least significant of the three movies in the boxed set, "Eisenstein the Sound Years". Not a bad conclusion to "Ivan the Terrible Part I", but pretty much meaningless without it.

The other two discs in this set, "Alexander Nevsky" and "Ivan the Terrible Part I" are excellent examples of art in the service of propaganda. Eisenstein and Prokofiev team up to portray evil and self sacrifice in a way obviously intended to inspire the Russian people for the conflict they were about to have with Germany.

Those movies will blow you away!

Despite having been produced over 60 years ago, IVAN THE TERRIBLE remains one of the most bizarre and compelling movies ever made. It is filmed in an ultra-expressionist style, despite the fact that expressionism had long passed its heyday in the 1920's and early 30's. Nonetheless, the style fits this almost gothic film perfectly. Religious and other symbols of power and authority are exaggerated, transformed into grotesques. The powerless peasantry, mired in the darkest ignorance, is presented as a frightening presence of menace, ever lurking in the background, waiting to be harnessed by the next tyrant. Ivan himself is depicted as an elongated, Nosferatu-type character with a moral compass so convoluted as to be nonexistent. The mixing of "song & dance numbers" under the most monstrous circumstances toward the end of Part II only enhances the mesmerizing quality of the film. It is said that Stalin attempted to pressure the director to make this masterpiece more "Stalinist friendly," but that the filmmaker courageously refused. Unfortunately almost all other films made during the Stalinist Era reflect the justifiably maligned, dreary style called "socialist realism."

Nosferatu - Special Edition
German Horror Classics (Nosferatu (1922) / The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / Waxworks / The Golem)

This double film is a masterpiece in many ways. It took two years of research before starting to come out of thin air and being filmed. The first part came out in 1944 and the second part in 1945. This means the research was done when the USSR was down under the feet of the nazis. The first part came out when the tide had turned and the Russians were already advancing in Poland. The second part came out after the fall of Berlin or close before. The political meaning at the time was clear. The first part was singing the praise of the man who unified Russia, just like it was necessary in the war years to reunify the USSR for the last push to Berlin. The second part is slightly different since it was the time when Ivan the Terrible had to face the plots and conspiracy from the Boyars, the nobles and the top echelon church people and he had to defeat them with wise schemes more than just plain violence. That was of course essential after the war to face the various groups of people who could have spoken out of unity now the outside danger was eliminated. But we have to go beyond this immediate and historical value of the film when it was shot. It is a masterpiece because Eisenstein uses rather simple means to produce an epic film whose every scene is poignant, powerful, impressive, etc. Eisenstein uses all the possibilities his know-how and experience provide him with. Of course he uses black and white to play on shade, shadows and contrast so that some scenes are frightening and quite in the line of the big masters of horror of the late 20s, Fritz Lang or Murnau. He uses the body language and the composition of the scenes and setting to make every single square centimeter meaningful and active. The hands, the faces, the bodies are among the best actors of the film along with the actors themselves, quite in the line of what Eisenstein was doing in the 20s, but even better because he was able to use their lips in order to make them speak. The soundtrack is prodigious. He composes a real symphony with voices used in the most dramatic and expressive way, with all kinds of sounds and noise that give a real depth to the pictures on the screen and the voices of the actors, and finally the outstanding music score by Prokofiev: probably one of the best film music ever and that music totally avoids the repetitiveness of the music of the old silent films to create a fully developed universe of its own that amplifies the voices and the sounds and noises. That creates the epic atmosphere the story itself needs. What's more, in the second part, the use of color for two reels of the film shows the force of the black and white reels, and at the same time shows how Eisenstein can use the color of these reels in order to create a different but similar contrast, this time centered on red dominating the various other colors that are essentially, white, black and yellow. The red of these reels becomes the expression of life and at the same time of some oppressiveness coming from some danger that red also designates (and surprisingly enough we cannot find any "revolutionary" meaning to that red, but we may be missing some inside meaning in the USSR of the time). The films have been digitally re-mastered but not in any way changed: we still have the jerky pictures of those days and the blurry sound track of before digital sound (even the music that could have been re-recorded). And it is good because we really have the impression to watch an old film from the 50s. By the way do not believe what the historical presentation of the bonuses tell you, in English, at least in my edition, because it is purely there to pacify those who may see Stalin behind Ivan.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

If you are interested in the history, check this movie out. The subs aren't exactly great, but it lets you know what's going on.