Ivan the Terrible

I think that this film can be seen as one of Eisenstein's. The sound could throw someone off but I still think that it is evident. Eisenstein likes to use montage. In Ivan the Terrible Part 1, he did a lot of montages with expressions on the faces of people. Even in the beginning of the movie when Ivan was being coronated he had clips of people, the cross on the crown, and the priest. Also another of Eisenstein's favorite filming techniques is to show a picture of something for too long. The scene where Ivan takes over Kazan is apparent with the smoke and Kurbsky holding the flag up. Eisenstein decided to show billowing smoke on the screen for a long time even after we could already figure out that they had burned Kazan to the ground. I think the only difference in the films was the fact that he actually centered around one character. He didn't do that in Battleship Potemkin. I think that this film needed to have sound though. There was too much going on to be able to understand it without sound.
I also noticed that he used black for the one that went against Ivan and white for the innocent again. The characters of his film had very pale skin and dark eyeliner. It made the eyes stand out of the face more. And they had crazy hair. I mainly noticed Ivan's beard and one of the Boyars' beard as well. Also, they rarely moved around and when they did it was more rigid like a puppet. When Ivan is performing his deathbed scene, he fumbles around the room like he can't keep his legs under himself. He looked puppet like. I think those characteristics Eisenstein borrowed from Kabuki theatre.
As for Ivan the Terrible being a leader, I don't really know if he was that great. He seemed to be extremely power hungry. He wanted to control all of Russia and not just part of it. I could understand that bringing the Russian cities together as one would make them stronger, but in the beginning after his coronation I just saw him as power hungry. I also thought he was not a very sure leader. He would let others say what he should do and automatically go to the idea he heard first. Then when someone would propose another idea he would yell at them and tell them not to go against the Tsar. He seemed to be easily influenced. His Anastasia was dead and Alexi Basmanov comes in with his son and tells Ivan he should build an iron ring of men around him.
Ivan automatically thinks this is a wonderful idea but when his advisor says it might not be he yells at him. He barely knew Basmanov. He did seem to have a good ability to get the people of Moscow to like him. He seemed to be able to persuade them to accept him. When the people are rioting and they bust in on the dinner, Ivan listens to them and tells them things they want to hear. The only ones he couldn't persuade were the Boyars and that was because he was taking their power away from them and they didn't like that idea.