Throughout my viewing of this movie I sought to look for parts that would seem familiar to me from Eisenstein's earlier soundless movies. I did not find many similarities between this film and Battleship Potemkin; I would not have guessed that both movies were made by the same director.
To me, it makes sense that a sound movie and a silent movie made by the same director seem very different. It is much harder to entice an audience when sound is not available. I don't think that Ivan the Terrible was as artistic as Battleship Potemkin. With Battleship Potemkin montages were used more often and the movie moved at a faster pace. Throughout Ivan the Terrible scenes went by much slower. With sound as a stimulant to the audience, Eisenstein cued in longer on his actors and sets. Eisenstein used the actors faces to fill up the entire screen during Ivan which I don't remember him doing during Battleship Potemkin. For silent movies I think that Eisenstein felt he couldn't focus the camera on key points for any length of time for fear of losing the audience.
What I think was a key point to Ivan the Terrible was music. Music will set the mood for any scene during the movie and I think Eisenstein used this. With access to his personal composer, Sergei Prokofiev, he was able to tailor the movie to convey the exact feelings he wanted the audience to feel. To me, music affects the mood of a money much more than words coming out of an actors mouth.
Ivan the Terrible as a leader seems like the good guy of the film. He wants the best for his Motherland. He wants to end the squabbles between the Boyars and take his country back from foreigners. These are just the sort of goals that would appeal to any patriot. Nothing sounds better than kicking out the invaders of your homeland. Throughout the movie I continually hated the Boyars for what they were doing to Ivan. They murdered his wife, what else were we supposed to think? Ivan seemed like just the leader that Russia needed. He figured out exactly what Russia was by the end of Part 1. Ivan figured out that Russia is the common man, or the mob. Ivan knew that if he controlled the people, the Boyars would never be a problem. The Boyars knew this too. They even turned the people against Ivan when the Baltic campaign failed.
This is when Ivan's greatest strength was revealed, he was only one man who wanted power. The Boyars were several men who all wanted power to stay divided. The Boyars were not willing to make concessions for any one of them to gain power over himself. They came off as greedy men, uncaring of the people that made them wealthy. It is one of the reasons the people came to Ivan and begged him to come back.
There are some similarities between Ivan and Stalin. I think both men took advantage of the situation before them. Before both men came to power, Russia was in great need of a leader to give the people vision. This may be more true for Ivan than Stalin, but both men cared greatly about the "greatness of Russia." Both men were indifferent about religion. Ivan and Stalin were leaders of the common man. Nobility had no meaning to them.
This was a very interesting buildup of Ivan. You can just sense that Ivan is about to become a fierce and fearless dictator. The formation of the "Iron Ring" of men says it all. He trusts no one, which I sense will be his undoing. Though I can't say that I blame, everyone close to him either died or betrayed him.
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I agree that Stalin and Ivan are very much alike.
ReplyDeleteVery nice comparison of the "silent Eisenstein" and the "sound Eisenstein." And you're quite right, rapid montage as we know it from Battleship Potemkin is virtually non-existent in this film. The shots are longer (and I think richer and more complex).
ReplyDeleteIn some ways it's almost as if--while the silent Eisenstein was an innovator and pushing things forward--the sound Eisenstein seems almost to be moving backward towards a style that in certain ways may not be that far from Evegeni Bauer's at times.
But one thing that really sticks out for me is the complexity and ambiguity of the later, sound Eisenstein--whereas the silent Eisenstein tended to do all of the work for the viewer, establishing things with a black-and-white, good vs. bad simplicity. And it's this richness that has a tendency to make me keep wanting to come back to the director's later works rather than his more experimental earier films.
And you're right about the absolute importance of the music here. Eisenstein and Prokofiev worked together very, very closely on this score--so it's amazing music in that it can both stand completely on its own yet really fits the film to (at leasd in my view) absolute perfection.
I also like the distinction you make between Ivan wanting power vs. the Boyars wanting it to remain divided. And indeed this could be very much what allows him to predominate more and more as things proceed.