Best on Max: Ivan the Terrible, Part I Watch and Cast Guide

Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944) — an evergreen reference for this movie: the essentials, the cast, where to watch and what to watch next.

Where to watch

TMDB's U.S. watch-provider data lists HBO Max Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel, FlixFling, HBO Max. Availability changes by country and date, so check your streaming app before watching.

Cast

Nikolai Cherkasov as Czar Ivan IV; Lyudmila Tselikovskaya as Czarina Anastasia Romanovna; Serafima Birman as Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya; Mikhail Nazvanov as Prince Andrei Kurbsky; Mikhail Zharov as Czar's Guard Malyuta Skuratov; Amvrosii Buchma as Czar's Guard Aleksei Basmanov; Mikhail Kuznetsov as Fyodor Basmanov; Pavel Kadochnikov as Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky

About Ivan the Terrible, Part I

Set during the early part of his reign, Ivan faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people. Sergei Eisenstein's final film, this is the first part of a three-part biopic of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, which was never completed due to the producer's dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's attempts to use forbidden experimental filming techniques and excessive cost overruns. The second part was completed but not released for a decade after Eisenstein's death and a change of heart in the USSR government toward his work; the third part was only in its earliest stage of filming when shooting was stopped altogether.

More like Ivan the Terrible, Part I

• Andrei Rublev
• Munich - The Edge of War
• October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
• Adventures of a Mathematician
• Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot
• Shattered Glass
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
• Mary

Figures and availability come from public TMDB data and are provided as a sourced reference.