Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished masterpiece, Ivan the Terrible, was no ordinary movie. Commissioned by Joseph Stalin in 1941 to justify state terror in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth, the film's politics, style, and epic scope aroused controversy even before it was released. In This Thing of Darkness, Joan Neuberger offers a sweeping account of the conception, making, and reception of Ivan the Terrible that weaves together Eisenstein's expansive thinking and experimental practice with a groundbreaking new view of artistic production under Stalin. Drawing on Eisenstein's unpublished production notebooks, diaries, and manuscripts, Neuberger's riveting narrative chronicles Eisenstein's personal, creative, and political challenges and reveals the ways cinematic invention, artistic theory, political critique, and historical and psychological analysis went hand in hand in this famously complex film.
Neuberger's bold arguments and daring insights into every aspect of Eisenstein's work during this period, together with her ability to lucidly connect his wide-ranging late theory with his work on Ivan, show the director exploiting the institutions of Soviet artistic production not only to expose the cruelties of Stalin and his circle but to challenge the fundamental principles of Soviet ideology itself. Ivan the Terrible, she argues, shows us one of the world's greatest filmmakers and one of the 20th century's greatest artists observing the world around him and experimenting with every element of film art to explore the psychology of political ambition, uncover the history of recurring cycles of violence and lay bare the tragedy of absolute power.
This Thing of Darkness is published by Cornell University Press
REVIEWS
"A superbly informed, comprehensive reading of the films that may fairly be said to be the first fully to unpack and contextualize this still controversial masterpiece." - Cinéaste
"Joan Neuberger has given us a wonderful book. Anyone interested in Eisenstein, in Soviet film, in the ways Soviet artists and the institutions around them interacted, or in what happened to Soviet art during World War II will want to read this lively, well-researched, thought-provoking monograph a couple of times over—and then will be sure to keep it somewhere readily at hand, for easy access while teaching classes on film or Eisenstein or Russian history." - The Russian Review
"This Thing of Darkness, Joan Neuberger's engrossing production history of Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, is a major contribution to the study of Eisenstein and thus informs the history and theory of cinema and the study of Soviet culture and politics. Neuberger's ability to mine, interpret, and connect Eisenstein's voluminous, intriguingly digressive writings makes this book exceptional." - Karla Oeler, Stanford University
"Joan Neuberger's study combines her background in Russian history with a deep awareness of Eisenstein's incredibly wide-ranging research and speculation while making his last film. A real tour de force that reaches a new level in Eisenstein studies—making a strong case for Ivan the Terrible as the crowning achievement of his career." - Ian Christie, Birkbeck College, University of London
five minutes with joan neuberger
Interview for Pushkin House by Andrew Jack (@AJack)
How did you become interested in Russia?
I went to college intending to study English literature but took a course on twentieth-century Russia, and I was hooked. I dove in, became a Russian major, and in my senior year in 1975 studied the language in Leningrad. I was fascinated by everything I saw there and decided to go to graduate school. In Leningrad I found myself leaning away from literature toward history because all my questions seemed to be historical ones: how could such a brilliant, warm, hospitable people produce the economic, political, and human rights disaster that was the Soviet Union?
What drew you to Eisenstein?
I first saw Eisenstein’s films at college. This was before most universities had film departments, but many had extensive film programmes. Every weekend in a creaky old auditorium at Grinnell College we could watch 2 or 3 classic films: Eisenstein, Fellini, Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Chaplin, and many more. It didn’t occur to me till much later that I could combine history and film. It was in the mid-1990s when I decided to teach a film class, which I thought would be a great way to get students to study history. I discovered that virtually nothing had been written about the politics of Ivan the Terrible, which surprised me: it was such an obviously political film. It was commissioned by Stalin, who expected its portrait of the medieval ruler to reflect well on himself and justify his own rule.
Why did you decide to write your book?
I was going to Moscow to do some other research and I discovered Eisenstein’s enormous archive. He filled over 100 notebooks devoted to Ivan the Terrible as he was reading, writing the script, and began making the film. That’s extremely rare. In addition to the notebooks, we have letters, records of conversations with actors and film administrators, and the film theory manuscripts that Eisenstein was writing at the time, all of which gives us material that can tell us what kind of film he wanted to make. I was going to write a little article and go on with my life, but I found all this writing absolutely captivating and ultimately decided to write a book.
What did you learn about Eisenstein?
Eisenstein was a deeply learned person who read voraciously, owned thousands of books, and, in his diary and notebooks, was constantly reflecting on the various things he was reading. One interesting thing about the notebooks is that they are written in English, French, German and Russian and the entries seem to be coded. It is not completely consistent but he often used German to write about psychology and philosophy and French to talk about romance and sex. He very rarely wrote about politics or about himself, but when he did it is often in English. He was interested in the history of art and culture from all over the world and all of this was reflected in Ivan the Terrible: Mexican architecture, Chinese landscape painting, Disney cartoons, ancient Greek myth, Machiavelli, Napoleon, Balzac, and Shakespeare. He was able to make such a rich, complex film because production was repeatedly postponed by World War II. The film was commissioned in January 1941, the Nazis invaded in June, and the whole industry was evacuated from Moscow in October. He didn’t begin filming until 1943 and didn’t finish Part II until the beginning of 1946. And he was still thinking about Ivan the Terrible on the day he died in 1948.
What did you hope to achieve with the book?
Ivan the Terrible is widely seen as a masterpiece but it has been equally widely misunderstood. My goal was to sort through the many subjects that Eisenstein addresses in the film – historical, political, psychological, aesthetic – and to use his own writing to show what he was thinking. I want historians to appreciate the importance of the film as a historical document for understanding Stalinism. This film is the only contemporary portrait of Stalin that we have that is a serious analytical study of the man and his exercise of power. I want film and cultural scholars to appreciate the historical forces that shaped Eisenstein’s film as a work of art. And I want to offer all viewers new tools for understanding the film in all its complexity.
How would you describe Ivan the Terrible?
Ivan the Terrible is a difficult film to summarize because Eisenstein made it so complex: it is a history, a character study, a political thriller, and a laboratory for artistic experiment. In addition to being a shrewd critique of Stalin and Stalinism, it raises profound questions about the nature of political power, state violence, and ideology in the past and in the present. The film is a tragedy about the inner struggles of the powerful as well as their rivals and victims, a study of the ways great ideas in history can be distorted by the personal feelings of historical rulers, and an illustration of the ways elements of our past lives – as individuals and as societies - endure in the present. Along the way, he explores all the basic components of Stalinist ideology – historical progress, the positive hero, dialectical materialism, revolutionary change, class consciousness, the cult of personality - and shows them each to be fundamentally flawed. Throughout the film, Eisenstein attempts to convey his ideas and feelings about these subjects by using all the features of film art – acting, lighting, music, camera movement, editing -- to move viewers into thinking and feeling in new ways.
Was Eisenstein’s behaviour justifiable?
All his films were commissioned by the authorities and he made public statements supporting the state so it is often assumed he was nothing more than an apologist for the Stalinist government. But his film work was never simple propaganda. He had a very good sense of the structure of political decision making, particularly the patronage system, which he was able to use to his advantage, to protect himself while making a film that challenged the Soviet system. And he had no illusions about Stalin, who he was and how dangerous and violent he was. As a film maker he never stopped experimenting, pushing the boundaries. His own career suffered with films not made or banned. Off-screen, young film makers saw him as a model for surviving under Stalin with dignity and a sense of public responsibility. It makes sense to see him as someone who understood and worked in the system, which gave him the tools to criticise from within. He remained a lifelong socialist, but his socialism was at odds with official ideology. And all the questions he is raising in Ivan the Terrible make us wonder about the basic components of Soviet Stalinist ideology. He questions the notion of the Marxist teleology of constant improvement in society from primitive to advanced. He makes us see that the past is never in the past, and that human beings are driven to use violence repeatedly. By giving us a complicated, contradictory ruler, he challenges us to ask questions about what it means to be a ruler. Not only do I think his behaviour was justified, I think it was courageous.
What is your judgement on the film?
Ivan the Terrible has long been recognised as a masterpiece of film art, but in this book I try to show how Eisenstein the artist was inseparable from Eisenstein the political and psychological and historical thinker. His style of film making was meant to direct the audience to ask questions and interpret the film on their own: to both feel strongly the emotions raised and think hard while they were watching. I do think in the end he shows us the way the revolution has degenerated, that individuals are too complex to be Socialist Realist heroes, that history is constantly repeating itself and that while we seek to act responsibly, we are constantly driven back to our most primitive natures.
What is your next book?
I’m writing about Eisenstein’s use of landscape in his film about Mexico, from the early 1930s, and his writing about nature in Nonindifferent Nature (the title is derived from a Pushkin quote), written in the 1940s. He’s saying that nature is not only not indifferent but it interacts with us and shapes who we are. This idea that human beings could feel they were part of nature was a model for him for the way spectators become immersed in cinema. It is also a model for how individuals become immersed in a collective society. He couldn’t really write about an alternative socialist collective under Stalin so it was muted but it’s there.
Joan Neuberger is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She has written extensively in print and online about Eisenstein, film, and modern Russian cultural history.
Joan Neuberger’s website
2020 shortlist
