# Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Иван Грозный. Первая серия)
**Ivan the Terrible, Part I** (Иван Грозный. Первая серия) is a 1944 Soviet black-and-white historical drama directed and written by [Sergei Eisenstein](https://www.edgepedia.org/sergei-eisenstein), the first part of his planned trilogy about Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, with a score by [Sergei Prokofiev](https://www.edgepedia.org/sergei-prokofiev) and Nikolai Cherkasov in the title role.[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/) • [2](https://www.criterion.com/films/625-ivan-the-terrible-part-i) [Ivan the Terrible](https://www.edgepedia.org/ivan-the-terrible), Part II, completed in 1946, was the last film Eisenstein worked on to completion; his death in 1948 ended the project before the third part could be made.[3](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/444/ivan-groznyi) • [20](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/115665--ivan-groznyi-ivan-the-terrible-parts-1-and-2/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writer | Sergei Eisenstein, who also produced; a film he completed[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/) • [20](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/115665--ivan-groznyi-ivan-the-terrible-parts-1-and-2/) |
| Production | Shot at the Central United Film Studio (TsOKS) in Alma-Ata, where Mosfilm had been evacuated; shooting began 1 February 1943[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ivan-grozny) • [5](https://www.belcanto.ru/film_grozny.html) |
| Format | Black and white, 35mm, 1.37:1, mono sound; 2,745 meters of film[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ivan-grozny) • [1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/) |
| Key personnel | Cinematography Andrei Moskvin and Eduard Tisse; music Sergei Prokofiev; production design Issac Shpinel[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/) |
| Lead cast | Nikolai Cherkasov (Ivan IV), Lyudmila Tselikovskaya (Tsarina Anastasia), Serafima Birman (Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya), Mikhail Zharov (Malyuta Skuratov), Pavel Kadochnikov (Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky)[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/625-ivan-the-terrible-part-i) |
| Awards | Stalin Prize, first degree (1946); Locarno festival jury prize for best cinematography (Moskvin and Tisse, 1946)[6](https://www.km.ru/kino/encyclopedia/ivan-groznyi) |
| Release | Completed in 1944; public premiere 20 January 1945 at the Udarnik cinema in Moscow[3](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/444/ivan-groznyi) |
## Spoilers
### Story and style
Part I covers the early years of the reign. It opens with the coronation of Ivan IV as the first tsar of Russia, then shows his marriage to [Anastasia](https://www.edgepedia.org/anastasia), the conquest of Kazan, Ivan's grave illness during which the boyars (medieval Russian aristocrats who opposed Tsar Ivan) intrigue over his succession, the poisoning of the tsarina by the boyars, and Ivan's self-imposed withdrawal to Alexandrovskaya Sloboda, from which the people implore him to return to Moscow.[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/) The film's action spans more than twenty years of the reign across the two completed parts.[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/)
The style departs sharply from Eisenstein's silent-era montage films. Critics describe the acting as exaggerated and halting, combining silent film, ballet, and Kabuki theater, with frozen gestures that give performers the look of statues; the action unfolds largely in stylized sets rather than natural locations.[12](https://www.tcm.com/articles/38690/ivan-the-terrible-part-one-ivan-the-terrible-part-one) • [13](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/535-ivan-the-terrible-parts-i-and-ii%26lang%3Den) Prokofiev's score, written in close collaboration with Eisenstein, juxtaposes two warring themes for the two sides of Ivan's personality, a dramatic clarion call of nobility against a jazz-inflected oboe trill of suspicion.[13](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/535-ivan-the-terrible-parts-i-and-ii%26lang%3Den) One of the film's most cited images is the profile of the tsar against a long procession of people come to beg him to return from Alexandrovskaya Sloboda, a shot the director's commentators read as a fresco in black and white rather than a topical gesture.[9](https://www.mosfilm.ru/about/news/otkrytie-groznogo/)
## Commission and wartime production
The subject was assigned rather than chosen. The theme of Ivan the Terrible was proposed to Eisenstein in January 1941 from the Kremlin, with the intent, relayed in paraphrase, that history should serve as a lesson and that the analogy to the present was the point of the picture.[7](https://www.russkoekino.ru/books/ruskino/ruskino-0046.shtml) The historian Joan Neuberger, professor emerita at the [University of Texas at Austin](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-texas-at-austin), describes the project in her 2019 monograph *This Thing of Darkness* as commissioned by [Joseph Stalin](https://www.edgepedia.org/joseph-stalin) to justify state terror in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth.[8](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv11wj6s) Eisenstein himself framed the aim as an "historical rehabilitation" of a ruler whose image as a senselessly cruel tsar had been fixed by his political opponents, above all Prince Andrei Kurbsky.[9](https://www.mosfilm.ru/about/news/otkrytie-groznogo/)
**Wartime conditions shaped the shoot.** Preparations began at Mosfilm in 1941, but the German invasion forced the studio's evacuation to [Kazakhstan](https://www.edgepedia.org/kazakhstan), and Part I was filmed at the newly formed Central United Film Studio (TsOKS) in Alma-Ata under an acute shortage of equipment, costumes, and props, and on a compressed schedule for so elaborate a production.[10](https://www.mosfilm.ru/about/news/k-75-letiyu-kinokartiny-sergeya-eyzenshteyna-ivan-groznyy-velikiy-film-s-neprostoy-sudboy/) Shooting began on 1 February 1943.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ivan-grozny) In July 1944 the crew returned to the Mosfilm pavilions in Moscow.[5](https://www.belcanto.ru/film_grozny.html) Eisenstein had finished the director's script in Alma-Ata in July 1942, and after completing the scenario in 1941 he devoted two further years to historical research and more than two thousand production drawings.[11](https://www.kinomuzejs.lv/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Eizensteina-buklets_izstade.pdf) • [12](https://www.tcm.com/articles/38690/ivan-the-terrible-part-one-ivan-the-terrible-part-one) He also made the costume sketches himself and personally supervised their sewing.[3](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/444/ivan-groznyi)
## Reception and awards
The January 1945 premiere at the Udarnik, with a costume exhibition in the foyer, was received by the Soviet press as a major victory for Soviet art, and the film had an overwhelming public success.[3](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/444/ivan-groznyi) • [9](https://www.mosfilm.ru/about/news/otkrytie-groznogo/) Part I received the Stalin Prize, first degree, in 1946, awarded to Eisenstein, Cherkasov, Birman, the cinematographers Moskvin and Tisse, and Prokofiev, and it took the jury prize for best cinematography at the first Locarno International Film Festival in 1946.[6](https://www.km.ru/kino/encyclopedia/ivan-groznyi) According to Neuberger's archival work, Stalin personally weighed in to overturn the negative recommendation of the prize committee, while ordinary Soviet letter-writers were bewildered by the film's "murky" narrative structure and complained that it was tiresome rather than exciting.[14](https://modernhistory.ru/f/petrone.pdf)
Abroad, reactions divided. [Charlie Chaplin](https://www.edgepedia.org/charlie-chaplin) called it the highest achievement in the genre of historical films.[9](https://www.mosfilm.ru/about/news/otkrytie-groznogo/) When Part I opened in Los Angeles in 1946, American critics reacted with stunned outrage, and [Orson Welles](https://www.edgepedia.org/orson-welles) wrote two mixed 1946 reviews, based on a unsubtitled United Nations screening, that emphasized what he saw as the film's visual rhetoric.[8](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv11wj6s) • [15](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1131-high-and-low-eisenstein-s-ivan-the-terrible) On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100 percent Tomatometer from 17 critics and a 91 percent audience score from more than 2,500 ratings.[16](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ivan_the_terrible_part_i)
## The trilogy that was not completed
Eisenstein conceived the work as a single whole that exceeded the accepted length of one film, and he divided it into three parts.[7](https://www.russkoekino.ru/books/ruskino/ruskino-0046.shtml) Part II, *The Boyars' Plot*, was shot in late 1945 and completed in February 1946, with Eisenstein suffering a heart attack around the strain of finishing it.[4](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ivan-grozny) • [13](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/535-ivan-the-terrible-parts-i-and-ii%26lang%3Den) After Stalin personally viewed Part II and condemned its portrayal of the oprichniki (Ivan's brutal personal enforcers and secret police) as a gang of degenerates and of Ivan as weak-willed, the Central Committee's resolution of 4 September 1946 censured the film, and Part II was banned, reaching screens only in 1958 after Stalin's death.[17](https://imk2020.shpl.ru/moodle/pluginfile.php/602/mod_resource/content/1/5_tr_vopr_ivan%204.pdf) • [18](https://csdfmuseum.ru/articles/418) Eisenstein shot only a few fragments of Part III before dying of a massive heart attack in 1948; those fragments are now lost apart from a test.[3](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/444/ivan-groznyi) • [15](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1131-high-and-low-eisenstein-s-ivan-the-terrible)
Later scholarship has read the finished parts differently from the official reception. Neuberger argues that the film is a subversive critique of Stalin and [Stalinism](https://www.edgepedia.org/stalinism), with a positive surface and a negative subtext, and the [Criterion](https://www.edgepedia.org/criterion) essayist J. Hoberman describes the two parts as simultaneously celebrating, critiquing, and analyzing Ivan, Stalin, and Eisenstein himself.[19](https://scholars.uky.edu/en/publications/eisensteins-ivan-the-terrible-and-the-history-of-mentalit%C3%A9s) • [15](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1131-high-and-low-eisenstein-s-ivan-the-terrible) A 2016 restoration of the film was released by Mosfilm.[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/)
## References
1. [Иван Грозный, Mosfilm film page](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/ivan-groznyy-/)
2. [Ivan the Terrible, Part I, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/625-ivan-the-terrible-part-i)
3. [Смотреть фильм «Иван Грозный», Культура.РФ](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/444/ivan-groznyi)
4. [Ivan Grozny, Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ivan-grozny)
5. [Фильм Сергея Эйзенштейна «Иван Грозный», Belcanto.ru](https://www.belcanto.ru/film_grozny.html)
6. [ИВАН ГРОЗНЫЙ, Энциклопедия KM.RU](https://www.km.ru/kino/encyclopedia/ivan-groznyi)
7. [Художественный фильм "Иван Грозный", Русское кино](https://www.russkoekino.ru/books/ruskino/ruskino-0046.shtml)
8. [Joan Neuberger, This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia, Cornell University Press, 2019](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv11wj6s)
9. [Кино об актуальном прошлом, Mosfilm](https://www.mosfilm.ru/about/news/otkrytie-groznogo/)
10. [К 75-летию кинокартины «Иван Грозный», Mosfilm](https://www.mosfilm.ru/about/news/k-75-letiyu-kinokartiny-sergeya-eyzenshteyna-ivan-groznyy-velikiy-film-s-neprostoy-sudboy/)
11. [Sergei Eisenstein biographical timeline, Kinomuzejs](https://www.kinomuzejs.lv/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Eizensteina-buklets_izstade.pdf)
12. [Ivan the Terrible Part One, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/38690/ivan-the-terrible-part-one-ivan-the-terrible-part-one)
13. [J. Hoberman, Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/535-ivan-the-terrible-parts-i-and-ii%26lang%3Den)
14. [Review of Joan Neuberger, This Thing of Darkness, Новейшая история России](https://modernhistory.ru/f/petrone.pdf)
15. [High and Low: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1131-high-and-low-eisenstein-s-ivan-the-terrible)
16. [Ivan the Terrible, Part One, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ivan_the_terrible_part_i)
17. [Учебный материал по фильму «Иван Грозный», ШПЛ](https://imk2020.shpl.ru/moodle/pluginfile.php/602/mod_resource/content/1/5_tr_vopr_ivan%204.pdf)
18. [ЦОКС, Центральная Объединенная киностудия, Музей ЦСДФ](https://csdfmuseum.ru/articles/418)
19. [Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and the History of Mentalités, University of Kentucky](https://scholars.uky.edu/en/publications/eisensteins-ivan-the-terrible-and-the-history-of-mentalit%C3%A9s)
20. [Ivan Groznyi = Ivan the Terrible. Parts 1 and 2, Sergei Eisenstein, 1947, ACMI collection](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/115665--ivan-groznyi-ivan-the-terrible-parts-1-and-2/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1940s*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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