Set during the early part of his reign, Ivan faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people. Sergei Eisenstein's final film, this is the first part of a three-part biopic of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, which was never completed due to the producer's dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's attempts to use forbidden experimental filming techniques and excessive cost overruns. The second part was completed but not released for a decade after Eisenstein's death and a change of heart in the USSR government toward his work; the third part was only in its earliest stage of filming when shooting was stopped altogether.

Nikolai Cherkasov
as Czar Ivan IV

Lyudmila Tselikovskaya
as Czarina Anastasia Romanovna

Serafima Birman
as Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya

Mikhail Nazvanov
as Prince Andrei Kurbsky

Mikhail Zharov
as Czar's Guard Malyuta Skuratov

Amvrosii Buchma
as Czar's Guard Aleksei Basmanov

Mikhail Kuznetsov
as Fyodor Basmanov

Pavel Kadochnikov
as Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky

Andrei Abrikosov
as Boyar Fyodor Kolychev

Alexander Mgebrov
as Novgorod's Archbishop Pimen
CinemaSerf
Nikolay Cherkasov is superb in this speculative biopic of the infamous Tsar of all the Russias. Made towards the end of the Second World War, Sergei Eisenstein manages to create a magnificent depiction of just how this often barbaric, but actually rather shrewd and intelligent 16th century monarch i...