The Mystery of the Wife and the Beast

Directed by

Boris Blank

The reason for the creation of the tape was an amazing find. Artist Lydia Naumova, who worked with Sergei Eisenstein on the film "Ivan the Terrible", has preserved a unique collection of drawings by the master for the third, unfinished series of the film. This collection has not been published anywhere yet. The authors called their film "The Mystery of the Woman and the Beast", based on a well-known sign that appeared to the Apostle John. In their interpretation, the wife is the personification of a high and beautiful feminine principle. The beast is an obedient tool of Satan, called to do great deeds and deceive the living with them. Such an act was the revolution, one of the most powerful and passionate adherents of which was Sergei Eisenstein. And if in the films Eisenstein was irreconcilable and tough, then in his drawings he appears soft, uninhibited, human. Eisenstein's unknown drawings and rare photographs are juxtaposed in the film with fragments from his paintings.