Иван Грозный I.
Samenvattingen(1)
Originally conceived as a historical epic in three parts, Sergei Eisenstein's epic biography of Czar Ivan IV, the murderous 16th-century unifier of the Russian people, was truncated by the director's death in 1948, as he was about to begin part three. A spectacle of impressively baroque splendor, it remains one of the great anomalies of film history. Starring Nikolai Cherkassov as the eponymous ruler, the film opens with the 16-year-old's opulent coronation in 1546. He breaks with the custom of marriage to a foreign princess by marrying a Russian girl, Anastasia Romanovna (Lyudmila Tselikovskaya), thereby offending the nobility. In an effort to expand his territory eastward, he leads an army of 100,000 to seize Kazan, succeeding only after a long and bitter campaign. After contracting a seemingly fatal illness, Ivan summons the boyars, led by his aunt Euphrosinia (Serafima Birman), but they refuse his demand to swear allegiance to his one-year-old son, greatly angering the czar. When Ivan miraculously returns to health, he begins to consolidate power in opposition to the boyars. (officiële tekst van distribiteur)
(meer)Recensie (1)
Sergei Eisenstein is a giant of Russian and actually worldwide cinema, and the first part of his "Ivan the Terrible" is a great costume drama, but somehow I didn't feel the grandeur that I expected from it. The crowd scenes are here, as usual, but they also seemed small to me, as if their potential wasn't fully utilized. I didn't like the first part too much, it couldn't hold my attention.
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