ABSTRACT

Eisenstein’s English-speaking audience views his last film project from a perspective dominated by the histories and tragedies of Shakespeare. Echoes of the plays abound in the two parts of Ivan the Terrible the Soviet film-maker was allowed to complete. Of course Eisenstein worked with a multiplicity of models; examples from many different artists were constantly finding application in his work. He noted with surprise the way something out of the great fund of works he had read and seen would come to mind at the very moment it could be useful to him. Other artists helped him-also challenged him: Naum Kleiman has spoken about the sense of contest or competition in Eisenstein’s relations with other artists.1 While acknowledging the role of the many other artistic examples that continually interact in Eisenstein’s work, we may focus on what Eisenstein learned from Shakespeare. And we are free to pass to the questions of how he measured himself against the playwright and how we ourselves measure Eisenstein against Shakespeare.