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''Ivan the Terrible'' (Russian ''Иван Грозный, Ivan Groznyy'') is a 1944 UsefulNotes/{{Soviet|Russia Ukraine And So On}} UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}n historical drama film duology, Creator/SergeiEisenstein's second (and last) sound film and a SpiritualSuccessor to ''Film/AlexanderNevsky'', with Creator/NikolayCherkasov in the main role once again.

This highly stylized film duology chronicles the life of the (in)famous [[UsefulNotes/IvanTheTerrible Ivan IV "The Terrible"]], from his rise as a Prince henpecked by the Boyars, feudal nobleman, to a powerful UsefulNotes/{{Tsar|Tsar Autocrats}} who will unite Russia into a gigantic kingdom. Part I chronicles the Prince's marriage, his benign and happy early years, his wars in the Kazan, personal tragedy and eventual rise. Part II shows the Prince preparing to stave off the Boyars from making a resurgence, establishing his special secret police, the Oprichniki, and finally embracing his destiny as ''Groznyy'' (''The Terrible'').

The first film was made during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, and had the support of UsefulNotes/JosefStalin, whose CultOfPersonality invoked Ivan. Eisenstein conceived of the film as a trilogy, yet only two parts were finished, with Part III being cancelled in mid-production because Stalin was very critical of Part II, followed by Eisenstein's death a brief while later. Part I released in 1944 earned the director the Stalin Prize (Soviet Nobel Prize-cum-Oscar) and was well received internationally. The second part, shot back-to-back with the first one, was completed in 1946. However it was shelved, and it was released only in 1958 long after Eisenstein's (and fives years after Stalin's death). Part II became especially famous for its color sequence, which was shot on Agfacolor film stock looted by Red Army troops in [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Germany]].

It is regarded as a classic of Soviet/Russian and world cinema and is available on Creator/TheCriterionCollection.
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!! This film provides examples of:

* AdaptationDistillation: Malyuta, Ivan's SideKick, chief of Oprichnina is a peasant who wants to execute aristocrats. That trope easily fits the movie format. Historical Malyuta was a low-ranking aristocrat who resented high ranking aristocrats, explaining the SideKick's character arc would have taken too long.
* AntiHero: Ivan the Terrible and his Terror Squad, the Oprichniki.
* AristocratsAreEvil: All of them, save for the Tsar and Anastasia Romanovna Zakharyina-Yuryeva, his wife and MoralityPet.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: The movie takes many, ''many'' liberties with history. For instance, most of Ivan the Terrible's opponents are [[CompositeCharacter conflated]] into Eufrosinia Staritskaya and her son. In reality, Ivan the Terrible had seven wives; only one is shown in the film. Many events from his life are omitted or rearranged in sequence, etc. All this was done to present him, at least in Part I, as a positive figure.
* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: The movie begins with the coronation of Ivan as Tsar of Moscow and Autocrat of All Russia. The scene is quite lavish and lasts 10 minutes, and culminates with Ivan being [[PooledFunds showered with gold coins]].
* BatmanGambit: The tsar's plan to eliminate his opposition.
* BlackAndGreyMorality: The boyars are a wicked and callous lot, but Ivan the Terrible is no angel, either. This makes it, ironically, the most balanced of Eisenstein's films.
* TheCaligula: Ivan during the Oprichnik dance scene (see below).
* TheChessmaster: Both Ivan and his [[BigBad nemesis]] Efrosinia Staritskaya. ("Yevrosinya"; your subtitles may vary).
* CostumePorn: There's quite a multitude of lavish costumes, especially for the coronation scene.
* CrapsackWorld: Medieval Russia seems to be a really, really, ''really'' nasty place to live.
* CulturalPosturing: Both Ivan the Terrible and his enemies (e.g., the Tatar envoy and the Polish king) go through their share of national chest-thumping.
* DecadentCourt: The boyars.
* DefectorFromDecadence: [[spoiler:Prince Kurbsky]] is hailed as one at the Polish court.
* DragQueen: Fyodor Basmanov. Yes. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tcPBx3O_H4&spfreload=10 In a 1945 Soviet Movie]].
* EpicMovie: One of the most lavish spectacles of Stalinian cinema.
* ErmineCapeEffect: The tsar wears some really wealthy clothing.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: ''Efrosinia'', of all people, has one of these moments in Part 2, when the Bishop[?] tells her he plans to let Philip be condemned, so they'll have a saintly martyr for their crusade against Ivan: "White is the cowl but black the soul!"
* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler:Andrey Kurbsky and, arguably, Feodor Kolychov]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}: To RealLife, paralleling Russia's suffering in the time of Ivan the Terrible with its suffering in the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Great Patriotic War]].
** "The first English ships have entered the White Sea."
** "We've beaten you, Germans-Livonians! [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar The time will come when you shall submit to Muscovy]]."
* FaceOfAnAngelMindOfADemon: Fyodor Basmanov is angelically beautiful. He is also Ivan the Terrible's fanatically loyal right hand man in crime and happily sings about murder and burning in hellishly lit banquets
* FreudianExcuse: Ivan IV hates the Boyars and is paranoid because as a young Prince, they separated him from his mother and killed her.
* GoodAngelBadAngel: Anastasia as the Good Angel, Fyodor as the Bad Angel
* GorgeousPeriodDress: A lot of it, very historically accurate as well. Especially impressive considering this was made during World War II when even the cast and crew had to live on rations.
%%* GravityMaster: Ivan, judging from his beard.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: While fighting against insidious, immoral, and corrupt boyars, the tsar slowly descends into brutality, paranoia and outright madness. Most notably in Part II, Ivan IV gives a MotiveRant as to why he hates the boyars, noting that as a child they separated him from his mother. At the end of that, Ivan IV kills Vladimir in front of his mother Efrosinia. Film historians, noting the subtext and the Freudian themes in the film, suggest that this was part of the film's critique. [[FullCircleRevolution Ivan IV is a populist monarch who appeals to the people rather than the nobleman, but he ends up becoming the tyrant he had opposed to start with]], noting that this was part of Eisenstein's SelfDeprecation on the entire Soviet generation.
* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: Ivan IV was always better regarded in Russia than across Europe. Even aside from the Stalinist propaganda, the film does highlight the Tsar's drive to unify and centralize the monarchy and curtail the power of the corrupt noblemen, one reason for his real-life popularity. Part 1 does exaggerate the Tsar's "populism" however. The second part, however, shows Ivan IV building and empowering the Oprichniki.
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: The Oprichniki in Part II, according to Stalin and the Central Committee. They are depicted as UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan-type fanatics rather than, in Stalin's words, "[[http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv3n2/ivant.htm the progressive army]]"[[note]]Stalin noted that the Oprichnina were a National Royal army loyal to the King rather than feudal bannerman, which in a Marxist Hegelian sense, was paving the way for dialectical transformation of Kingdom-to-Nation and so, makes Ivan IV "progressive". Needless to say, describing the Oprichniki as an army is highly generous, most historians see them as being more like an Inquisitorial body and PoliceState.[[/note]].
* KickTheDog: Kurbsky's needless cruelty towards the Tatars foreshadows [[spoiler:his betrayal of the tsar]].
* KnightInShiningArmor: Both Ivan and Andrey Kurbsky wear ornate, shining plate armor during the siege scene.
* KubrickStare: Lots. In the coronation scene that kicks off Part I, all of Ivan's rivals and enemies are looking at him this way.
* LonelyAtTheTop: The entire premise of the movie, and the reality at the end of Part II.
* LostInTranslation: Ivan's sobriquet, "Groznyi", really means more "Fearsome" than "Terrible"--but the modern English connotation of the word makes it sounds like, say, Pope John XII (AKA "Pope John the Bad").
* MoralityChain: The Czarina
* NameDrop: Averted (in Part 1)--nobody calls Ivan "the Terrible". Then played ''totally'' straight in part 2, when Ivan [[ChewingTheScenery declares, quite melodramatically]], that
--> "Henceforth, I shall be as you name me! I shall be...'''Ivan the Terrible!!"'''
* NecessarilyEvil: The Oprichnina terror campaign.
* NewEraSpeech: Ivan makes one right after the coronation, much to the boyars' dismay.
* PoliceState: The Oprichniki establish this in Part II, and Part III would have shown them at the height of their power. The only surviving scene from Part III, available on the Criterion DVD, shows them bullying [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Staden Heinrich von Stadten]].
* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: Ivan's slow journey from heroic young king to bitter tyrant is the core of the story, and infamously a reason for Stalin's poor reception to Part II. Stalin related entirely too hard to Ivan Groznyy, and didn't like the implications for his ''own'' tyrannical rule.
* PunctuatedForEmphasis: The oath of the Oprichniki, also a quote from Ivan himself, ends "For the sake of the GREAT! RUSSIAN! KINGDOM!" (Ради русского царства великого!)
* ReignOfTerror: What Ivan and the Oprichniki establish at the end of Part II.
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Ivan the Terrible personally commands his army during the siege of Kazan and tirelessly works to strengthen his realm.
* RuleOfSymbolism: The movie is rife with symbols, some pretty obvious, some quite intricate. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible_%28film%29 The Other Wiki]] does a good job of sorting them out.
* SanitySlippage: In the second film, Ivan slowly descends into madness and wickedness, culminating in the colour sequence.
* ShoutOut:
** Eisenstein conceived the film as a historical film in the tradition of Creator/WilliamShakespeare's history plays (also propaganda for the [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfTudor Tudor]] and Jacobean monarchs) and so deliberately modelled the film on ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''Theatre/KingLear'' and ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}''.
** Visually, the film is filled with a range of artistic and literary references. It alludes at several times to Paul Gauguin, Giotto and other historical paintings in its compositions and references.
* SplashOfColor: The Oprichnik banquet scene is filmed in color, making it look nightmarishly surreal.
* StateSec: The Oprichniki.
* ThatRussianSquatDance: Performed during the banquet scene.
* ThenLetMeBeEvil: The Czar decides to become a terror after repeated Boyar attempts against him.
* VillainousBSOD: Efrosinia has one at the end of Part 2.
* VillainProtagonist: By the later parts, Ivan has become the villain of his own story.
* VillainSong: Two or three of them, one sung by Feodor Basmanov and the oprichniks, another by Efrosinia, [[RuleOfThree the third]]... if you consider the tsar a villain, that would be the theme song.
* WickedCultured: Ivan is shown to be quite knowledgeable and refined for his era.
* WorldOfHam: The entire cast is fond of theatrics, eye-rolling, [[MilkingTheGiantCow hand-waving]] and [[ChewingTheScenery bombastic speeches]].
* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: Everybody speaks a highly stylized language with a veneer of antiquity that has actually little to do with actual Old Russian.
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