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THE EUROPEAN CINEMA
larger than life that comparison with the historical Ivan is futile, just as this version makes the old Paul Leni rendering of Ivan in Waxworks seem juvenile. The film and its central figure teemed with portent of what is to come, and perhaps all mysteries would have been resolved through the completion and release of the second and third films, though the reception of the second part throws doubt on this. Jay Leyda writes : ' Most of this Part II of the projected trilogy was shot during the production of Part I, but its cutting (including sequences in colour) was not completed until the beginning of 1946. Immediately upon the completion of the cutting, Eisenstein suffered an almost fatal heart attack, confining him to hospital for the remainder of the year. During this time screenings of his work-print aroused considerable critical controversy, of which he was unaware until his release from the hospital. At present he is completing Part II for release in 1948/ According to Ivor Montagu, the finishing of Part II coincided with a stroke. On his recovery, he found that his film had been categorised as ' giving a false impression of history ', and after a meeting with Stalin, he was working on remaking Part II and preparing Part III, when he died suddenly on February 10, 1948.1
James Agee and others have seen in Part I of Ivan a veiled allegory of the callousness of Stalinism to all human obstacles, and a protest against the rigidity with which it constricts artistic creation. To me, the case seems otherwise. I cannot conceive that anyone should seriously question Eisenstein's intellectual adherence to the philosophy of Communism or to the methods of the Politburo. To me, the keys to his latter career are two : the evasions of The General Line, and the statement, often attributed to Eisenstein himself, that he was ' a bourgeois at heart \ This great master remained interested only in the medium which he had so finely helped to create. His speculative mind, forever roaming through the ages of
1 Memorial Programme of Eisenstein's Work, London, May 2nd, 1948, PP. 5-14.
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