Serafima Birman gives strong-willed women a theatrical force without making them merely grotesque. In Ivan the Terrible, Part I, we value that intensity, even when Eisenstein’s formal style makes it hard to get close to anyone.
Fi1m perspective
In Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944), Serafima Birman’s Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya brings a formidable will to the business of opposing her nephew, the Tsar. The acting is openly theatrical, and well suited to Sergei Eisenstein’s forceful images. We found her unsettling because the aunt’s determination feels so fixed; there is little comfort in knowing that this is a family dispute. It is a forceful performance in a film we recommend, with the caveat that its formality can keep the people remote.
Birman’s early screen work included Madame Irène in Boris Barnet’s comedy The Girl with the Hat Box (1927). Her film appearances were intermittent beside her theatre career. Her grounding in Stanislavsky did not prevent her from embracing grotesque and eccentric character roles. Eisenstein’s films brought her major recognition; she returned to Efrosinia in Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars’ Plot (1958). That second instalment was filmed in 1946, though it was not released until 1958.
In Part I, her emphatic style belongs alongside Nikolay Cherkasov’s severe performance. Her account of preparing Efrosinia stresses finding what the woman wants, rather than simply portraying the head of a family. That helps explain why the scheming aunt remains a person with a purpose, even when Birman’s playing is at its most exaggerated. Her gift is to allow some humanity into a character who could easily be reduced to villainy. There is a cost: her determination can feel so settled that we have little room to wonder about her.
Her later screen work included supporting parts and animation voices, among them Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1965). Start with Part I for Birman, Cherkasov and the force of Eisenstein’s images. Choose another evening if the acting needs to look as though nobody is acting.
Biography
Serafima Germanovna Birman was a Russian and Soviet actress, theatre director and pedagogue. Born in Kishinyov in 1890, she graduated from the drama school of A. I. Adashev in Moscow in 1911 and joined the Moscow Art Theatre, later performing with its First Studio and Second Moscow Art Theatre as well as other Moscow companies.
She appeared in silent films including The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and The Girl with the Hat Box (1927). Her best-known screen role was Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya in Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944) and Part II (1958). For the performance she was awarded the Stalin Prize first degree in 1946 and named People’s Artist of the RSFSR the same year. She also directed stage productions and provided voices for animated films such as Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1965).
