A Productive Trinity

Abstract

This Thing of Darkness by Joan Neuberger, about S. M. Eisenstein’s film “Ivan the Terrible”, is the result of enormous work by a professional historian, a serious art critic, and an experienced teacher. The most important features of this productive trinity were manifested in it: a deep knowledge of the history of Russia (equally in the 16th and 20th centuries); a subtle understanding of the specifics of art in general and cinema in particular; the ability to clearly and easily present one’s observations, hypotheses, and conclusions; and finally (last but not least), the successful penetration into the creative world of Sergey Eisenstein, a director and theoretician, draftsman and psychologist, connoisseur of classical world culture and courageous experimentalist-modernist, but at the same time an honest person and a politically minded citizen of his own country in the tragic period of its history, that of Stalin’s tyranny. The author was lucky enough to witness the long-term evolution of this work, from earliest experiments to the publication of a fundamental monograph. In the process of researching archival materials and as we penetrated into the film itself, the circle and type of questions changed. The author expresses confidence that from now on, not a single serious specialist in the history of Soviet cinema, not a single biographer or researcher of Eisenstein’s work can do without the wonderful work of Joan Neuberger.