Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 95
Three Reviews by Andre Bazin
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field. Today, however, the cinema is considered so large a subject that the critictheorist can at best carve out for study only a small portion of it. Bazin, for his part,
ambitiously and innocently tried to tackle all of it—and to a remarkable degree
succeeded.
Ivan the Terrible'
At the moment I’m writing this article, barely two weeks after the release
of Ivan the Terrible (Part 1 ,1944; Part II, 1946) at the Normandie Theater, the fate
of this superproduction already seems decided. Most of the critics were extremely
restrained, but the public itself has not been restrained: at best, it cannot hide its
disappointment and its surprise; at worst, it sometimes laughs out loud. The film
cognoscenti gloat scornfully and keep repeating that it would have been preferable
for Russian prestige had the film not been released in France at all. I persist in
believing, however, that Ivan the Terrible is a beautiful work that does the director
of The Battleship Potemkin (1925) and The General Line (1929) proud.
On account of the German invasion, Sergei Eisenstein went as far as Asia
to make his film, in the remote studios of Alma-Ata.^ Should we therefore see in
these geographical considerations the origin of the film’s style? Eisenstein’s genius
and sensibility may be the most Western in Russian cinema; yet, in spite of the fact
that the action takes place in western Russia in the sixteenth century, he obviously
wanted to make an Asian film. This intention is discernible not only in the
preponderantly Eastern extravagance of the sets and costumes, but also in the very
conception of the drama and its performance, both of which are so heavily stylized
that they border on mime and dance. I think that it would be a mistake, nonetheless,
to consider th H[ݚYx