THE BOYARS’ PLOT (PART 2 of IVAN THE

Fed as we usually are on mediocrity, this film, like its predecessor ‘Ivan the Terrible, Part 1), shocks with its originality and grandeur. Following the complications of the plot may tend to detract from observing the revolutionary use which Eisenstein has made of cinematic possibilities.

Visually this film is a fresco, from which the characters emerge as portraits, fused with their background of Byzantine murals and ikons. The forms of painting, sculpture and architecture, opera and ballet, drama and the novel, are synthesised in a new harmonious whole Though the plot is intricate, the theme is essentially simple. The major character is derived from Ivan, Tsar of All Russia (1533-1584), who in fighting the boyars (great feudal lords) hastened the emergence of a centralised State power. In this, Ivan’s methods were no more humane than those of his Western European counterparts; he used ‘barbarous methods to drive out barbarism’. Ivan sees as his mission the unification of Russia. Plotting against him are the boyars and the Church; the boyars have ceded land to foreign powers and are preparing to collaborate in the planned Polish invasion. Around himself, Ivan has built a ring of steel, the Oprichniks (‘men apart’), chosen from the lower nobility, who have dedicated their lives and their ‘souls’ to Ivan’s cause. The internal struggle is resolved when Ivan foils the attempt on his life, and the boyars’ candidate for the Tsardom is killed instead.

Why was this film banned in Russia under Stalin? After all, the film breathes patriotism, justifies the historical necessity of brutality, and depicts the greatness of the relentness man of destiny.

Above all the idolatry accorded to Stalin would not permit of the ‘great man’ of history being depicted as beset with doubts—as is this Ivan, when in anguish before the massacre of the boyars, he questions his right to commit the deed; or, when driven by loneliness and lack of confidence, he is suppliant to a priest. Ivan develops through uncertainties and hesitations to iron determination. But, presumably, the ‘great man’ is allowed neither conflict no growth; god-like he leaps on to the stage of history with all the necessary qualities balanced in perpetual excellence.

Eisenstein the artist was a genius and neither his early revolutionary ardour (‘Battleship Potemkin’), nor his later patriotism were expressed in routine eulogies. Always he. created, experimenting with the medium, advancing it, and probing it to yet further limits. And so, too, in Ivan, he could not be content with a two dimensional vision of an epoch and a man’ He gave depth and perspective and for this he was condemned BENITA TEPER

FEBRUARY. 6, 1960 Cadogan justifies his united front for breaking through