FAQ for
Ivan Groznyy I (1944) More at IMDbPro »

No. Ivan the Terrible, parts one and two, was one of Harry Medved's surprising choices for "Fifty Worst Movies of All Time." He collected the following quotations:

"... a motionless motion picture. In some scenes only the slow movement of the eyeballs gives evidence of life." -- Virginia Wright, Los Angeles Daily News

"... over-long and ponderous." -- Variety

"... a series of dramatic tableux with rather choppy continuity and a minimum of subtlety in the characterization." -- Newsweek

"... demoded, primitive acting that combines the weighty drama of early opera with the first rushes of The Great Train Robbery." -- Shirley O'Hara, The New Republic

"... slow-paced to the point of discomfort. . . . The film appears to be more a curiosity than anything else, filled with plots rather than plot, done in a style that is supposedly monumental, and containing much rolling of eyes by leading Soviet actors." -- Saturday Review

And then a quotation from Sergei M. Eisenstein himself:

"I've missed my chance, I didn't die at the right time. What a monument you would have raised in my memory if I had died straight after The Battleship Potemkin! I've made a mess of my own biography!"

From: Harry Medved, "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way)," NY, 1978.

See also: Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky zagovor (1944) and Bronenosets Potyomkin (1925).