I remember how the original "Ivan The Terrible" movie gave us so much epicness with its battle scenes. I was disappointed to find out that none of them were in here. This isn't to say this isn't a great movie worth your time. It was more talky and psychological. I admit to not knowing much about the actual history of Ivan the Terrible, so I can't tell how historically accurate this is. Okay, simply by looking it up, I realize he wasn't assassinated. This is still a great movie. It's mostly because of how good the color and black and white effects work. I seriously wasn't expecting that.In fact, this was around the time that black and white films were starting to disappear. I don't think it was until about 1965 that nearly every film was color. Whatever, this certainly used it well. The costumes in this movie are as gorgeous as ever. Everyone just looks so great with a unique appearance. It's funny how Sergei Eisenstein wasn't allowed to make this movie until after Joseph Stalin died. It's great to have something become a period piece while already being a period piece. There's a third one? ***1/2

Part 2 followed on from Part 1 without a gap – the 2 put together would make one colossal movie. The only trouble being that the last 90 minutes or so would still be missing (Part 3). This has a 16 minute colour sequence near the end plus the last 2 minutes that added a new dimension to the story, and although the spotlighting was a bit ropey it all worked well with the usual fantastic camera angles and ugly brooding people.Ivan vacillates between doing it his way and relying on Mother Church for help. Either way the plotting aristocratic boyars have to be sorted out for once and for all, this he sets out to accomplish with the help of the Men Apart – his NKVD. In reality Ivan was going mad at this period, the similarities to Stalin still resound. Eisenstein pulled his punches but must have known Part 2 would end up in trouble, which it did – it wasn't released from the metaphorical gulag until 1958, and Part 3 was aborted. Intensely absorbing and startlingly melodramatic by turns it still hasn't got the same energy as Part 1, but that only makes it a lesser classic. Again, it resembles a sedate silent film with sound (with a bit of red this time), the simple tale powerfully told by a master propagandist using sledgehammer symbolism at every turn. Intelligent film-making is hardly the phrase to use – a previous post compared Eisenstein correctly to Kurosawa – very different styles but with the same results.Wonderful sequel, much better to be watched on the heels of Part 1. At least the people who didn't like that won't watch this and comment adversely on it, right?

There is more than a passing resemblance to the easily-recognized ideological mantrums (and nostrums) of Cesar's Rome, Napoleon's French Revolution, Hitler's Third Reich, and modern day Myanmar-style dictatorships. It is worth remembering here that Bush II has been quoted as an admirer of Hitler in this regard; however, he had not yet seen Ivan the Terrible at the time of his remark. Sergi Einstein, Film Creator and Director, represents here the forces of enlightenment having finally penetrated the Art and Craft of cinematography, in the same tradition of today's Aung San Su Kyi in Myanmar, who penetrated the socio-economics of dictatorial politics became a martyr for Burmese political democracy, or Martin Luther King who became a martyr for religious integrity in America. Each penetrated the art and craft of the "media" with their message of enlightenment in their own time, and each was subsequently both lionized and martyred by the pallid posturings and inaction of the surrounding civilizations of their own time.The film today continues to serve as a brilliant expose of the psychotic "magical thinking" and egotistical self-delusion behind the ageless struggles for political and religious righteousness and supremacy, from neocon ideological "crusades" to terrorist socio-economic "jihad" in the name of destiny, righteousness, and, yes, even god, and clearly demonstrates the historical failure of concomitant collaboration between religious theological and political ideological "purity" to mask the ulterior pursuit of base self-aggrandizement in the all-seeing eye of history.

This space can't afford me the kind of gargantuan platform needed to speak on Eisenstein's masterwork (both parts) with the sort of attention to detail and passion that the director brings to the story of the Russian tsar. This is the rarest of films that stands as a testament to how cinema can extend beyond an entertainment and exist as a singular work of art and a document that works to expand our knowledge of the human condition. Every frame is rich, every scene speaks far more than any written line or action. The production is a phenomenal achievement in the absolute totality of the collaborative effort; the actors, the set, the cinematography, the soundtrack - every facet of the film-making process has worked to create a seamless connection. While the approach of the actors, the lighting and the choices of camera angles frustrate our standard ideas of what a movie should look and feel like, there is a design here; it is precise and it is brilliant. This is a film for those viewers who, as Eisenstein famously said, read (not just watched) the images on the screen. One of the two or three true masterworks in the history of movies.