Sergei Eisenstein - Ivan the Terrible - Part II

Sergei Eisenstein's second installment of his intended film trilogy about Ivan the Terrible began production in 1945. When finished, a year later, Stalin's censors harshly criticised the film on account of its ambivalent depiction of state terrorism. This led to a decision not to release the film, which, in turn, caused production of Part III to cease.

Part II tells the story of Ivan's crushing of the boyars, and is remarkable, among other things, for its sudden switch to colour film during the last ten minutes. This was intended to symbolise the transition from good to bad, and is part of the general array of symbols used by Eisenstein to convey meaning or the nature of the main characters, who are likened to various animals.

Sadly, the online version is from a very poor transfer. The DVD version I watched (the cover of which is shown on this page) was much clearer. Still, write in hopes that someone will release a digitally remastered version that does justice to the film. Quality is always king, and it is not as if the technology is unavailable or prohibitively expensive these days—what is lacking is will and men prepared to sacrifice a few percentage points in their profit margins in exchange for releasing top-notch product.