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Reviews
Ivan Groznyy (1944)
a mess!
This movie is awful. I am quite mad at myself that I've wasted 3 hours watching this (first and second part). Acting is horrible, except for Kadochnikov, who is quite good, the actor who played Malyuta Skuratov, who is okay, and Cherkasov is good as Ivan at the banquet scene (in the second part). Everywhere else Cherkasov is quite bad.
The plot doesn't really exist. Or maybe it does, but the movie is so slow that we don't notice any plot. Prokofiev's music is nice itself, but in this movie it makes the things a lot worse -- pompous and overdramatic. In this sense, second part is better, because there is much less Prokofiev's music.
Eisenstein must really hate his actors, since he uses them as marionettes: they have to stand in various poses with still faces. The angle of Ivan's beard is mure important to Eisenstein than Ivan's character.
The good things: photography is wonderful, Kadochnikov is good, and the aforementioned banquet scene almost saves the second part (nothing saves the first part). But that plot line where Ivan dresses Vasily as a tsar and Vasily gets killed was probably stolen from the German silent movie "Waxworks", filmed somewhere about 1924. That movie also has a story about Ivan the Terrible, that supposedly was the main inspiration for Eisenstein.
The final thing to say: if you want to learn something about Ivan or medieval Russia, don't watch this movie: Eisenstein apparently had NO respect for history. In this movie, Ivan frequently says the lines that were said by different historical figures, and is in general quite far from the real Ivan the Terrible.
If you are from Russia, you probably remember the commercials "Vsemirnaya istoriya: bank Imperial". So, this is what this movie is: 3 hour long "Bank Imperial" commercial.
Watch at your own risk.
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1924)
nice silent movie!
I really enjoyed that film. It's not a masterpiece, like "Caligari" or "Nosferatu", but a good fun film anyway. Veidt and Jannings are wonderful. The first part, about Haroun al Rashid (played by Emil Jannings), is very humorous (and funny as well), with well written plot. The second part, about Ivan the Terrible (played by Conrad Veidt), is, in contrast, very dark and depressing. In my humble opinion, it is much better than Eisenstein's movie (which also steals shamelessly from it); for sure, Veidt is better than Cherkasov. The third story is something really weird: it starts and suddenly ends, like the crew ran out of money.
So, a lot of humour in the first part, a lot of "Russian gothic" ;-) in the second part, good acting, good plot, great sets -- if you like silent movies (especially expressionist silent movies), don't miss this one!
P.S. If you like silent movies and still haven't seen "Cabinet of Doctor Kaligari" and "Nosferatu, symphony of horror", see them first -- they are better than "Waxworks"!