Ivan the Terrible, Part II / The Boyar's Plot (1958) British Quad Film Poster

Peter Strausfeld artwork of Ivan the Terrible from director Sergei Eisenstein. This is the first release of the 1946 film which was banned until 1958 by Stalin for its portrayal of Ivan's bodyguard and the secret service being too much like "The Ku Klux Klan" and Ivan himself as "weak and indecisive, somewhat like Hamlet". By which time the director had been dead for ten years.