IVAN THE TERRIBLE

Ivan The Terrible 1944 46 was envisaged by its director Sergei Eisenstein as a trilogy But Eisenstein died before begining the third part Part One had been a resounding success winning a Stalin prize but Part Two met with the Kremlin s disfavour and was eventually banned until 1958 Using research gathered from Soviet archives Yuri Tsivian offers an insight into Eisenstein s grand project He reconstructs the director s mental film that underlies the finished work The book attempts to follow the train of thought that connect the aesthetic construction and visual design of the film to Eisenstein s knowldege of iconography and painting psychoanalysis and philosophy Shakespeare and Balzac and much more