"Ivan the Terrible"
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
Music by Sergei Prokofiev
1944

Since this movie came out in the Stalin years in the USSR, reviewers look for how it might have offended 
Stalin.

Ivan the Terrible was the first tzar of Russia. Prior to that time, local authorities had greater sway. The 
feudal nobles that Ivan the Terrible supplanted often resented the greater emphasis on Russian national 
identity and interests that Ivan the Terrible brought about. The feudal nobles called "boyars" killed both 
Ivan's mother and wife.

In his cause of bringing together a unified Russia, Ivan the Terrible wages wars, conducts foreign trade and 
seeks a non-hereditary social basis for his regime. To accomplish this latter goal, Ivan the Terrible set up a 
political police from people without hereditary property in land. The use of commoners in Ivan the 
Terrible's political police appears to check the power of the boyars. The new political police owe their 
power to Ivan the Terrible directly and not from a feudal system.

On the side of the boyars is the Church and a kind of Liberalism that says there should be no great
central authorities. That is not to mention tradition itself.

Toward the end of the movie we see the commoners who serve the tzar celebrate at a party in which they 
sing about how they have killed boyars and burned down their houses. "Chop, chop, chop" they sing and 
then they say, "burn, burn, burn."

Like "Alexander Nevsky," which is Eisenstein's 1938 film preparing for war with the Nazis, "Ivan the 
Terrible" has a strong nationalist bent. Controversy arises regarding the violence Ivan the Terrible 
employed toward unifying Russia and any possible analogies with Stalin that viewers might see.

We do not give this film an unqualified endorsement like "Alexander Nevsky." "Ivan the Terrible" is too 
controversial and the historical details too unknown to this reviewer.