IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART I AND II (1944, SOVIET UNION)

Ivan surveys his subjects in Ivan the Terrible, Part I

...or is this from Part II?

"Every frame in it looks great-it's a brilliant collection of stills-but as a movie, it's static, grandiose, and frequently ludicrous, with elaborate angled, overcomposed photography and overwrought, eyeball rolling performers slipping in and out of the walls, dragging their shadows behind them."-Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies

"It is Eisenstein's most ornate film, with the actors reduced to gesturing gargoyles, their bodies subordinated to his all -important visual shapes, themselves an unhealthy mixture of iconography and melodrama."-David Thompson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film

"Eisenstein's sound films displays a self-consciousness in the handling of montage that was deadening to the vitality and the exuberance of the method he applied so instinctively in his youth."-Gerald Mast, A Short History of Movies

"Ivan the Terrible, Part I is a film of awesome and monumental impressiveness, in which the senses are saturated in medieval majesty."-Bosley Crowther, New York Times, March 10, 1947

"Ivan the Terrible, Part II is murkily monolithic and monotonous series of scenes with little or no dramatic continuity and only fitful dynamic quality."-Bosley Crowther, New York Times, November 25, 1959

"The Ivan the Terrible films are cold, starkly beautiful pictures, difficult to watch, gloomy and compelling at the same time. Perhaps they offer a closet critique of Stalinist tyranny and the cult of personality."-R. Barton Palmer, 501 Movie Directors

Let it also be noted, comrades, that Ivan the Terrible also made Michael and Harry Medved's book the 50 Worst Films of All-Time. Critical reception for this film over the years has been mixed, to say the least.

The grandeur and the majesty are certainly there, but Eisentstein's actors seem to be more suited to performing in one of his silents than in a film with actual dialogue. I think if he had made it as a silent...it would be viewed today as more of a classic...Obviously, some still view it as a classic, anyway! From the above reviews, I still can't get over how much Bosley Crowther loved Part I and hated Part II. I didn't see that much artistic distinction between the two films, but so it goes.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A  Film Odyssey

OCTOBER (1927, SOVIET UNION)

                                                                             

   Lenin leads the charge in October

"It is clever, but a bore. It is kaleidoscopic, so much so that when months seem to have passed since one saw a man with a flag of truce, you find he is still sitting there in the same position awaiting an answer...There is crammed into this film enough for a half dozen productions, but most of the episodes are unfinished...Some of the action is a little muddled, but where Eisenstein does masterful work is in those scenes with hundreds and hundreds of people. It really seems as if they were part of the revolution, as if the scenes belonged in a newsreel."-Mordaunt Hall, New York Times, November 3, 1928.

I largely agree with many of the points of the above review comrades. I didn't like this film as much as Potemkin or Strike, as I began to shake me head after awhile trying to keep up with the mass of characters in this epic production. But Eisenstein's big scenes are still something to behold and were understandably influential to the ever growing cinematic language.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

STRIKE (1924, SOVIET UNION)

Scene from Sergei Eisenstein's Strike

"His (Director Sergei Eisenstein) first film, Strike (1924), revealed the bold, broad strokes of a new film master. From the film's opening montage sequence-of whirring machines, spinning gears, factory whistles, of traveling shots along the length of the factory complex, of dynamic, dizzying movement-the film proclaimed that a brilliant cinematic imagination was at work."-Gerald Mass, A Short History of the Movies, p. 57.

Eisenstein's most famous film is probably always going to remain Potemkin, but the earlier Strike is a memorable film in it's own right. The montage and editing that he would use so famously in Potemkin is in evidence here as well. And the story about the fat cats doing everything they can to squash the will of their workers certainly has more than a ring of truth to it.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925, SOVIET UNION)

In the beginning...She Blinded Me With Silents (Post 10 of 12)

Battleship Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (a film on the rebellion of of a Russian battleship and the subsequent reprisals from the czar's army),  is yet another silent I first encountered in The History of Film class I took during the 80's. It makes me nostalgic for my "textbook" A Short History of the Movies by Gerald Mast.

Here are some points on Battleship Potemkin from Mr. Mast:

1. Eisenstein has the visual ability to convert huge groups of people into complex and striking geometric shapes.

2. Eisenstein's montage increases the sense of movement and tension as the individual shots collide, crash, explode into each other.

3. Eisenstein's ability to alter mood: From the peaceful idyllic sequences of the striking workers at rest and play to the vicious slaughter of vicious slaughter of the workers in their tenements.

4. Eisenstein's sense of metaphor to comment on the action: the sickening slaughter of the dumb and defenseless ox, which comments on the slaughter of the workers.

5. Eisenstein's vision that the capitalistic Czarist system is  fundamentally inhuman and inhumane, an obstacle not only to physical survival but also human fellowship, family and brotherhood.

6. The power of his cutting is unmistakable (All the various shots and points of view of the sailor breaking the plate with the biblical platitudes on them)

7. For a film with a mass protagonist, the faces of individual people are strikingly memorable.

8. The film's five parts, mirroring the five-act structure of classical drama, form a taut structural whole: from the unity the sailor's build on the ship to the unity between ship and shore, to the unity of the entire fleet.

9. The most dazzling editorial sequence of all in the film is the slaughter of the innocent Odessans on the Steps.

10. The film time for the sequence on the Odessa Steps is longer than the actual time it would take a group of people to run down a flight of steps. Subjective time, the way it felt to be there, replaces natural time.

The most famous sequence in this film is definitely the murder of the innocent on the steps of Odessa by the czarist army. This has been called by many one of the most influential scenes in film history (obvious example-Brian De Palma in The Untouchables). One thing is for sure, you can't get through The History of Film class without it.