Ivan the Terrible

…but also evident in Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible) depends on contorted bodily and facial gestures, which are amplified by decor and camera angle. Eminent actors, including Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles, have shown that some types of films thrive on expansive theatrical voicing and gesture.

…even more ambitious—Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible)—about the 16th-century tsar Ivan IV, whom Stalin admired. Begun in 1943 in the Ural Mountains, the first part was finished in 1944, the second at the beginning of 1946. A third part was envisaged, but Eisenstein, suffering from angina pectoris, had to…

…and in the operatically stylized Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II (1944–46), a veiled critique of Stalin’s autocracy. Most of the films produced at the time were propaganda glorifying national heroes.