Ivan the Terrible, Part I

• 7.282 Drama
• 1944-11-11
• 100 minutes mins

Set during the early part of his reign, Ivan faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people. Sergei Eisenstein's final film, this is the first part of a three-part biopic of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, which was never completed due to the producer's dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's attempts to use forbidden experimental filming techniques and excessive cost overruns. The second part was completed but not released for a decade after Eisenstein's death and a change of heart in the USSR government toward his work; the third part was only in its earliest stage of filming when shooting was stopped altogether.

Starring:

Nikolai Cherkasov (Czar Ivan IV) Lyudmila Tselikovskaya (Czarina Anastasia Romanovna) Serafima Birman (Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya) Mikhail Nazvanov (Prince Andrei Kurbsky) Mikhail Zharov (Czar's Guard Malyuta Skuratov) Amvrosi Buchma (Czar's Guard Aleksei Basmanov) Mikhail Kuznetsov (Fyodor Basmanov) Pavel Kadochnikov (Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky) Andrei Abrikosov (Boyar Fyodor Kolychev) Alexander Mgebrov (Novgorod's Archbishop Pimen)

Director:

Sergei Eisenstein

Writer:

Sergei Eisenstein