Wikipedia:Peer review/Ivan the Terrible (1945 film)/archive1

Ivan the Terrible (1945 film)

I've listed this article for peer review because...

This article is already at Good Article status and I'm interested in promoting it to Featured Article status. Perhaps advice on what to focus on in the "themes and analysis" section would be most helpful; there's a lot in there but it feels unorganized.

Pinging Pagliaccious as they provided invaluable assistance in improving the article to Good Article status with their review; I would deeply appreciate any thoughts you have.

Thanks, Jaguarnik (talk) 04:27, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Jaguarnik. I'd be happy to do a thorough peer review of the article, though I'll be busy until halfway through September. After that, I'll begin working on this. Pagliaccious (talk) 21:06, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jaguarnik: not a full review, but per WP:LEADLENGTH, the article should have 3 to 4 lead paragraphs, not 2. 750h+ 10:37, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jaguarnik: I'm ready to begin a peer review. This will be my first peer review, so my comments will mostly be motivated by smaller details and adherence to guidelines. You may want a more experienced reviewer to take a broader look at the article in terms of length, cohesion, and coverage. As a set of examples for an idea of what sort of film articles usually pass FAR, I'm going to use two recent FA's: Aliens (film) and Mission: Impossible – Fallout. From a (very) cursory look, I don't see any historical drama FAs in the last ten years. It's possible that my review will take several days, as I'll work in parts, so please be patient. I'll start with a general look at the article, but I'll get to the "themes and analysis" review you requested. Pagliaccious (talk) 19:14, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Comments by Pagliaccious

First reading

Some general notes as I read through the article to reacquaint myself:

Lead

• 750h+ is correct about the lead length. You should consider expanding the two existing paragraphs and adding a third. I would suggest adding slightly more detail about the long history of the film's production and release, and moving the film has had a mixed legacy, being both harshly criticized and highly praised into its own lead paragraph concerning the film's reception and legacy.
• The two clauses A biopic starring Nikolay Cherkasov as Ivan IV of Russia, it was Eisenstein's final film seem unrelated. You should separate these into their own sentences while maintaining the flow of these first few lead sentences.
• You write Part II, although it finished production in 1946, was banned and not released until 1958. You should mention who exactly banned the film, and where.
• The semicolon seems unnecessary in Soviet leader Joseph Stalin commissioned the film in early 1941; production did not start until April 1943 in Alma-Ata. Consider just a comma and a contrasting conjunction.
  • Done.
• In Eisenstein had developed the scenario to require a third part to finish the story, what is a scenario? The lead should be especially readable to laymen. Consider wikilinking here or using a different term (outline, treatment, etc). I haven't gotten to this part in the body, so I'm not sure which would be most accurate.
  • Reworded as "Eisenstein had planned three parts for the film," which is both simpler and more succinct.

Plot

• In naming the subsections, you have "Part I" and "Part 2: The Boyars' Plot" (and later "Part III"). Is there a reason that only the second part has a subtitle? I don't see this mentioned or explained anywhere in the article, and besides this subsection name you use only "Part II" almost exclusively to refer to the second part, except in the Screenings section, where you write The second film, Ivan The Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot, was submitted for screening in February 1946. This brings me to another point:
• Should this be considered one film with multiple parts or multiple films? The title suggests the former, with (1945 film), but in certain parts of the article you write the film to refer to the work as a whole and a third film or the second film to refer to the parts. I would aim for consistency here. Perhaps only refer to the parts as parts, not films, unless this is inaccurate. I'm not entirely familiar with naming conventions for multi-part works.
  • Will change mentions of "films" to "parts" where necessary. As for the subtitle, the second part is officially called "Part II: The Boyars' Plot" (Сказ второй: Боярский заговор) but neither the first part nor the third part have any subtitles. I would consider this one film with multiple parts, as it was common practice in the USSR for films to have multiple parts (e.g. The Irony of Fate); this is a unique case where the second part was released much later after the first part.
• I'm noticing that you alternative between the Tsar and the tsar. Be consistent with whichever you choose to use, but I believe that it should only be capitalized immediately preceding a name (e.g. Tsar Ivan IV).
  • Fixed.
• Very minor personal note about the plot: you write Ivan falls (or pretends to fall) deathly ill. Where in the film is it suggested that he is pretending? I just don't remember this detail.
  • A few scholars (Perrie and Tsivian) seem to believe that he faked the illness. It isn't directly stated by the film, so I'll remove it.
• You write Ivan meets Kolychov, now known as Philip. Philip agrees to become metropolitan of Moscow, as long as he is given the right to intercede for condemned men. As soon as it is settled, Ivan finds a way around this: he has Malyuta execute the condemned men (three of which are Philip's kinsmen) quickly, before Philip can use his right. For what are the men condemned? You should either mention this or reword the sentences, something like "he has Malyuta execute several condemned men", rather than suggesting some specificity. Also, is there a particular reason Ivan persuades Philip to become metropolitan? Why does he need to agree?
  • Changed the wording. As for why Ivan wants Philip to be Metropolitan, the film isn't very clear, but it has to do with Ivan lacking allies and hoping that his friend would be his ally. I don't know if that should be included or if it's not relevant to the plot.

Cast

• I'm especially unfamiliar with this sort of section, so I'll have to skip it. From the two example articles I mentioned earlier, it seems like some articles have bulkier cast sections; on the other hand, Tenebrae (film) is an FA with an equally sparse cast section. I would opt to leave it as it is.

Production

• The "Development" section is very good. One small point: you write The screenplay was approved in September 1942, but due to bureaucratic pressure, Eisenstein removed most of the scenes with the English. Earlier you explain for what historical reasons Eisenstein chose to present the Germans negatively, but here you do not explain for what reasons the English would be removed from the film.
• For the "Casting" section, consider repeating wikilinks for cast members with existing articles, for example Kadochnikov and Kuznetsov. This follows MOS:REPEATLINK: you can repeat wikilinks where necessary in the article, linking at their first mention within a section. It makes sense to repeat their links here.

Sounds good.

• In the "Filming" section you write One of the difficulties was making Cherkasov look convincingly both older and younger than he was. One of the difficulties of what? This is a bit pedantic, but consider instead "One of the difficulties of filming..." or "One of the difficulties of production...", or if there weren't many difficulties from which you are distinguishing this specific case, write instead simply "One difficulty in filming..."

Good catch, I think it's necessary to specify.

• In the "Part III" section, you write when the decision was made not to release the second film, which suggests something less than obligatory (since it was banned).

Will fix that.

Themes and analysis

I'll do a more thorough review of this section later. For now:

• Here you have Pimen of Novgorod linked, but in his earlier mention in the "Cast" section he is unlinked.
  • I forgot about that, I'll move the link there.
• For this section you have many quotations, which led me to read MOS:FOREIGNQUOTE, since many of your references are in Russian. I don't actually see any direct translations in this section, but in a later section you write Film theorist Leonid Kozlov in a review of Eisenstein's career called it "the most complex and most masterful" of Eisenstein's films, yet the reference is in Russian. I'm assuming that the translation is your own, in which case you should include the original Russian in a footnote in your notelist. Try to do this anywhere else you've also translated directly. I also noticed that here you link directly to Leonid Kozlov on the Russian Wikipedia instead of using a redlink with a blue [ru] tag.

Help with this would be appreciated. The Template:ill doesn't work because it links to a different Leonid Kozlov. As for the Russian quotations, should I leave the quotation as a note in Template:efn or Template:sfn format?

Ah, now I see why you linked it that way. Try Leonid Kozlov, which is {{ill|Leonid Kozlov (film theorist)|lt=Leonid Kozlov|ru|Козлов, Леонид Константинович}}. For the quotations, I'm not entirely sure what the typical format is, but in the past I've used Template:efn and written something in the notes like "Russian: со мною вот что происходит..."

Screenings and release

• You write Ivan Pyryev compared the depiction of Ivan and the oprichnina to fascists. This is a bit pedantic, but do you mean that he compared the depiction of Ivan and the oprichnina to fascists (in which case Eisenstein is a fascist?), or that he compared the Ivan and the oprichnina of the depiction to fascists? I read the article you cited, and it seems that the comparison to fascism is only drawn between the oprichnina, not Ivan, who instead is compared to a "grand inquisitor". Consider rewriting this sentence, perhaps with something as simple as "Ivan Pyryev compared Eisenstein's oprichnina to fascists".
• You write that Part II was released in September 1958. Why was the film no longer banned and allowed to be released then?

My current sources don't seem to specify why the choice was made at that specific time; but I have a few more sources to look at that hopefully will clarify.

Reception

There's nothing I notice immediately wrong with this section.

References

• There are several references with no authors, but on closer inspection it seems that authors could be tracked down. For example, the reference "Eric Rohmer's 10 favourite films". BFI. 12 January 2015. Retrieved 29 July 2024. says "By Sam Wigley" on the left of the webpage. I haven't had much luck with the others, though.
  • Added Sam Wigley. I'll look at the others once more and see if I can find an author.

Final comments That's all for a general read of the article. Next I'll take a look at WP:MOS and see if there's anything glaringly wrong with the article. Pagliaccious (talk) 20:59, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your work so far! Jaguarnik (talk) 21:18, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

MOS

This will be an eclectic mix of things I notice while reading through MOS:FILM and related guidelines.

• Why does the "Further reading" section have an "Academic works" subsection if this is the only subsection?
  • Removed.
• In the same section, why is Eisenstein's name spelled three different ways? When I look up each book's ISBN on Google Books, the author is always given as "Sergei Eisenstein".
  • This is what remains from the article before I began working on it. I can modify that.
• The images all seem to be public domain, except for the non-free movie poster in the infobox which is justified. I found a few interesting drawings of the cast which may or may not be free-use, but their copyright is beyond my capability to find out. These could benefit from the CSS crop template.
  

  
  • Fun sketches, but unfortunately I wouldn't be able to find out either if they are in public domain.
• You write The historical Vladimir Staritsky is believed to have been poisoned. According to the citation, Shklovsky simply states "самого Владимира Старицкого отравили". Since Shklovsky goes on to clarify that "Я не историк, я писатель", I think that this should either read "Shklovsky writes that the historical Vladimir Staritsky was poisoned", or you should keep the Shklovsky citation to avoid WP:SYNTH and find a real историк to back up Shklovsky's claim, writing something simpler like "The historical Vladimir Staritsky was poisoned" to avoid weasel words like "believed".
  • I can find another source for Staritsky, but as far as I am aware the circumstances of his death are unclear, with him possibly being poisoned but not clear if he was poisoned, so I would keep "believed" anyway.

I've done a cursory bit of research into the Staritsky family, but I can't find any source which suggests doubt about Vladimir's death. Here are a few:

• "In 1569, the tsar accused Vladimir and his family of high treason and poisoned them." — Page 251 of Maureen Perrie's The Cambridge History of Russia
• "On October 9 [1569], the tsar accused Vladimir of planning an attempt at his life and ordered him to take poison." — Page 121 in George Vernadsky's A History of Russia
• "Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky, the Tsar's cousin, in whom Ivan the Terrible saw a pretender to the throne, was forced to take poison" — Page 38 of ru:Александр Иванович Рогов's Alexandrov
• "Sometimes the oprichniki concocted charges, as Skuratov and Griaznoi did to rid the tsar of a cousin, Prince Vladimir Staritsky, whose rule over a separate territory made him suspect. Soon after his arrival for a visit, the two confronted Staritsky with the charge that his cook had confessed to a plot to poison Ivan. Thus justified, they forced the prince to down a lethal drink" — Page 4 of Ruud and Stepanov's Fontanka 16: The Tsars' Secret Police

There is another source in Russian which I believe goes into detail about the levels of arsenic and mercury in Vladimir's exhumed body, but I can't get access to it: Опыт изучения некрополя Московского Кремля.

Ah, that's helpful, thank you. My source was quite old, so I went to look for some other sources after seeing yours, and it seems their conclusions are the same. I'll add that in the future.

I don't see any other immediate issues with style or grammar. I'll work on a broad review of the "Themes and analysis" section next. Pagliaccious (talk) 19:22, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Themes and analysis

This will be the last part of my review, and it will be a bit more broad-strokes. It's hard to find a balance between trivia and synthesis when you're writing tertiary, encyclopedic prose, so I wouldn't worry too much about making this as coherent as what you might find in a secondary source on the subject; on the other hand, coherence is still important, and broad treatments of the themes and subtexts of the film in secondary literature will always be more valuable than scattered papers on particular motifs.

The "Stalinism and the depiction of Ivan" section seems to me to be the most important subsection here. You open the second paragraph with The film's treatment of Stalinism has been debated. Critics generally agree that Ivan is meant to represent Stalin. I think that you've hidden the most important claim connecting Ivan and Stalinism in the second sentence. I would reword this opening to emphasize Ivan's connection to Stalin, and in fact if any thematic information was to be included/summarized in the lead, this would be my choice.

The "Historicity" section seems fine. It's good that you've mentioned motivations behind Eisenstein's decisions to alter history. Skipping down to the "Homoeroticism" section, this also looks well structured around a particular theme.

The remaining three sections ("Religion", "Allusions", "Symbolism") seem to me to be the least coherent. The first is rather short, and the remaining two remind me a little of a Trivia section: they are collections of tidbits of information, but there is no overarching significance to their inclusion beyond the idea that a symbol or allusion is inherently notable. Compare for example a couple of other FAs with Analysis sections: Tenebrae (film), Aliens (film), and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In each of these, the analysis section has been consolidated into three or four coherent thematic ideas in the films. I think that the "Themes and analysis" section would greatly benefit from the same kind of structure here, and it would solve the issues I mentioned with the three named subsections. Each of the FAs I linked are written the exact same way that your "Themes and analysis" section is written, so the problem with coherence and organization is not at the sentence level. All you need to do to solve your organization issue is use different sections and perhaps add a few introductory sentences to really glue the sections together. For example, Critics generally agree that Ivan is meant to represent Stalin as I mentioned above is a punchy and verifiable introduction to that section, and the other linked FAs have (cited, verifiable) opening statements like a central theme of Aliens is motherhood and Caligari ... thematizes brutal and irrational authority.

I'm not exactly sure how you should go about reorganizing the sections. This is largely up to you. My initial thoughts are that you should leave the "Homoeroticism" section as-is, perhaps combine the Stalinism, Historicity, and Religion sections (maybe what I see as an inherent tension between religion and state atheism is mentioned somewhere in secondary literature), and consolidate the "Allusions" and "Symbolism" sections into one or two distinct thematic ideas. Your choice of broad thematic sections should be motivated by secondary literature (i.e. sources stating something is a theme, not a symbol or motif), but looking at coverage in the existing article I would expect sections related to death (and guilt) or animals. Colors and shadows are mentioned frequently, but these aren't thematic ideas; whatever they suggest is the thematic idea. You may find that a few sentences don't connect in any way to the overarching thematic ideas, in which case you may want to remove them, but I'm certainly not suggesting that you remove the "Allusions" and "Symbolism" sections entirely. You're also not limited to only three or four subsections; that is the pattern in the linked FAs, but this is a much longer film than any of the three. At the same time, when you try to fit the existing prose into thematic sections, try to avoid subsections any shorter than the "Religion" subsection currently is.

That's all for my peer review. Overall, an excellent article, and I look forward to seeing it at FAR someday. Most of my suggestions have been just gnomish grammar suggestions, and I hope that you find my diagnosis of the "Themes and analysis" section helpful. Pagliaccious (talk) 18:05, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate your input! I definitely feel that I now have a plan for improvement of the article, so thank you so much for that. Jaguarnik (talk) 19:23, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Airship

I'll have a look at prose from a FAC-level standpoint:

• Careful with tenses."The biopic stars Nikolay Cherkasov as Ivan IV of Russia, and was Eisenstein's final film" is a bit odd to read and comprehend.
  • Will fix that.

• There's a consistent issue with repetition of words in the prose. See the following examples:

• • "The majority of the film was shot in Alma-Ata, with part of the film being shot in Moscow."

• • "rehabilitating Ivan's image to a more positive image...and promoted the image"

• • "a rough draft of the screenplay; he submitted the first draft of the screenplay"

• "in general about theory" slightly unclear—what theory?

• Per MOS:NUM, numbers less than ten should be spelled out in letters.

• Would transferring the planned plot of the third section to the general "Plot" section work better? I don't know—up to you.

• The first two images in the prose are a bit small—increase them using the |upright= parameter.

• The "Themes and analysis" section seems high-quality in terms of content, but its organisation is a little odd. Separating "allusions" and "symbolism" out as separate sections seems the oddest choice—it looks more like catch-all boxes for stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.
  • That is in the process of reworking, but you are right that it is at the moment not very organized.
• Note a) needs a citation.
  • The two sources I use - both from Neuberger - conflict on the date; I may extend the note.

Looking forward to whenever this appears at FAC! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:59, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

• Thank you very much for your review! Jaguarnik (talk) 15:51, 1 November 2024 (UTC)