SOURCE: "Two-Thirds of a Trilogy," in Film Quarterly, Vol. XII, No. 3, Spring, 1959, pp. 16-22.

Leyda is an American critic, filmmaker, and the translator of several of Eisenstein's works on film theory. In the following essay, he analyzes Eisenstein's political goals and influences as reflected in his two films about Russian czar Ivan the Terrible.

Eisenstein's several aims in making Ivan the Terrible have continued and will continue to be defined and argued. The theories find no common ground and do little to resolve the many questions the film evokes. For more than a decade we had only three pieces of evidence—the released version of Ivan, Part One; the published script of the whole two-part (later three-part) film; and denunciations and rumors of the unreleased Ivan, Part Two. On this basis were formed the political interpretation (Ivan IV shown as a prototype of Stalin), the psychological interpretation (explored...