Introduction -- New media, new means : Lieutenant Kizhe. Cinema and new simplicity ; Outlines ; Music for an absent hero ; Celluloid sound ; Skazka -- The queen of spades, the 1937 Pushkin Jubilee, and repatriation. The new simplicity and Pushkin's "True spirit" ; A silent with a soundtrack ; New music for an old tale ; Committee intervention -- The year 1938 : halcyon days in Hollywood and an unanticipated collaboration. Hollywood, part two ; Popov, Eisenstein, and Prokofiev ; Forging collaborative methods -- Alexander Nevsky and the Stalinist Museum. Epic frame, epic sound ; The "assumed vernacular" ; Prokofiev's Russians ; Stalin Prize -- The wartime films. The path to Alma-ata ; Wartime collaboration ; Authenticity versus "Patriotic resonance" ; Cosmopolitan versus Russian ; Ukrainian partisans ; Realities -- Ivan the Terrible and the Russian national tradition. Outlines ; Ivan in Russian music ; Caricatures and villainy ; Prokofiev's Ivan, Eisenstein's Gesamtkunstwerk ; Eisenstein's multivalency ; Stalin Prize revisited -- Epilogue -- Appendix: Prokofiev, "His respect for music was so great".