Nikolay Cherkasov makes authority visible in the way he holds his body. We value the discipline and force of his acting, especially for Sergei Eisenstein, while accepting that its severity can keep us at a distance.
Fi1m perspective
Nikolay Cherkasov holds himself so stiffly in Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944) that even an attentive audience is kept at a distance. As Czar Ivan IV, he makes royal authority something we can see in a man's bearing. We found him unsettling, and it was the stiffness of his posture that did it. It is a forceful performance, and its severity suits Sergei Eisenstein's carefully arranged images. A more relaxed actor would look misplaced.
That control of the body grew out of work in ballet, pantomime and acrobatics, and it was accompanied by a deep, reverberant voice. The elderly professor in Baltic Deputy (1937) helped establish him on screen before the title role in Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) brought international recognition. Elaborate make-up let him move between ages and types. Historical and heroic figures became his speciality, but they were not the whole of his work. In his account of playing Ivan, he describes choosing to emphasise majesty rather than the ordinary human traits that might make a historical figure feel more familiar to an audience.
Eisenstein's controlling approach might have reduced a less suited performer to another object in the composition. Cherkasov makes that precise positioning feel necessary to the part: his Ivan would be wrong if he seemed casually at home among other people. The drawback is that the film can keep its people remote, and an evening in such formal company requires some patience. We would not recommend him on the promise of naturalism. In Ivan the Terrible, Part I, the visual invention and the force of the performance are ample reasons to stay.
The later work offers a useful way beyond the rulers. Cherkasov took the title role in Grigori Kozintsev's Don Quixote (1957), continuing a career that included comedy and character parts as well as historical grandeur. That is worth remembering before treating his severe royal bearing as all he could do. Start with Ivan the Terrible, Part I, though, and give its unfamiliar acting style time to work.
Biography
Nikolay Konstantinovich Cherkasov (also credited as Nikolai Cherkasov) was a Soviet actor. Born on 27 July 1903 in Saint Petersburg, he died on 14 September 1966 in Leningrad. He is best known for his title roles in Sergei Eisenstein’s historical films Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944) and Part II (1958), in which he portrayed Czar Ivan IV.
Cherkasov trained at the Institute of Stage Arts, graduating in 1926. He worked in theatre from 1919, including as a mime artist at the Mariinsky Theatre and later at the Leningrad Academic Drama Theatre named after Pushkin until 1965. He received the title of People’s Artist of the USSR in 1947 and several Stalin Prizes for his performances.
