Ivan the Terrible (film)
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Ivan The Terrible is a two-part film about Ivan IV of Russia made by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. The film was originally planned to be divided into three separate parts, but only two of these were ever completed, as Eisenstein died before the filming of the third part could be finished.
With World War II approaching Moscow, Eisenstein was one of the many filmmakers based there who was evacuated to Alma-Ata. There he first considered the idea of making a film about Tsar Ivan IV, aka Ivan the Terrible, whom Josef Stalin happened to admire and came to see, in his imagination, as the same sort of brilliant, decisive, successful leader as Stalin fancied himself.
The first film, Ivan The Terrible, Part I, was filmed between 1942 and 1944 and released in 1945 without problems. The film, presenting Ivan IV of Russia as a national hero, won Josef Stalin's approval (and even a Stalin Prize).
The second film, Ivan The Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot , finished filming on Mosfilm in 1946. However, it was not approved by the government, because it depicted Ivan less as a hero and more as a paranoid tyrant, a parallel Stalin did not appreciate. The film was banned by Stalin from being shown, and despite being finished for over a decade, didn't get its first screening until 1958, five years after his death.
The third part, which started filming in 1946, was not completed. All footage from the film was confiscated, and most of it destroyed (though several filmed scenes still exist today).
The score for the films was composed by Sergei Prokofiev.
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