Sergei Eisenstein envisaged Ivan the Terrible (1944/46)--his highly stylised life of the sixteenth-century Russian Tsar--as a trilogy, but he died in 1948 before he could even really begin the third part. Whereas Part One had been a resounding success, winning a Stalin prize, Part Two met with the Kremlin's disfavour, which was communicated to Eisenstein by Zhdanov, Molotov and Stalin himself, and was banned until 1958. Ivan the Terrible is a ruin, but a glorious one, with its director at the height of his powers.
Yuri Tsivian has conducted extensive research in the Soviet archives and offers unprecedented insight into Eisenstein's grand project. As well as being an ambivalent chronicle of tyranny, Ivan the Terrible is the product of a lifetime's learning, artistry, and intellectual speculation. Tsivian reconstructs the director's 'mental film' that underlies the finished work. This book allows the reader to follow the trains of thought that connect the aesthetic construction and visual design of Ivan the Terrible to Eisenstein's knowledge of iconography and painting, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Shakespeare and Balzac--and much more.