for number 88 - we actually have two films - Parts I and II were filmed about a year apart but due to the nature of Part II, it never saw the light of day for 12 more years and the third part was scrubbed.
Sergei sought to make a trilogy of the Prince who united Russia as Tsar, but Stalin saw overtones in the 2nd film he didn't like and as a result the enterprise was scrapped - I will admit the stories as a whole were a little harder to get into - I found myself checking the time on Ivan a lot, but visually it was a decent film - there is a transition to color for a celebration at the end of part II that provides new life to the party, and the descent of Ivan into a paranoid tyrant is fun to trace.
I'm sure part III would have had the battle scenes and conquering hero riding west, but we stop here at a point where he has put an end to a plot against his life and as such, end on an anticlimactic note - stupid Stalin is always ruining my films.
In any case both DVD's have a documentary on them discussing the films, which give a lot to the backstory of how they were made and so forth - so worth finding in the library if you can
RB
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