gavin6942
The story of how a great Russian prince (Nikolai Cherkasov) led a ragtag army to battle an invading force of Teutonic Knights.After August 23, 1939, when the USSR signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which provided for non-aggression and collusion between Germany and the Soviet Union, "Alexander Nevsky" was removed from circulation. But the situation reversed dramatically on June 22, 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and the film rapidly returned to Soviet and western screens.Understanding the film in context is important. We could look at it as merely a historical battle of the Russians, Germans and Mongols... and we can certainly enjoy the movie in this context. But it is no accident that the movie was made in 1938, at a time shortly before Russia was to take on Nazi Germany. What better way to excite the Russian people than show them what one of their ancestors did to the Germans?
dwpollar
1st watched 1/26/2014 -- 4 out of 10 (Dir-Sergei Eisenstein & Dimitri Vasiliev) Russian propaganda historical film about the people defending their homeland(the mother Russia) in the 13th century with Prince Alexander Nevsky leading the battles. It starts with the main character fishing despite his recent victory over the Swedes, and is a reluctant leader unless called upon by his people. This is probably the kind of film that the Russian people want to hold onto as a good look at their heritage with Sergei Prokofiev(a Russian) providing the soundtrack, but that doesn't mean it makes for a good movie. The fighting scenes are somewhat realistic, for the time, but not necessarily entertaining or groundbreaking visually. If you learn something from a movie this is definitely a plus but unfortunately all I learned is who the Russians were fighting against(the Germans strangely coupled with the Roman church). There is an attempt to add an extra story with romantic possibilities as two of the men early want to marry the same girl, but then fight together and become best buddies before the end of the movie who don't care as much about the girl. What was missing for me from the movie was information about the man, Alexander Nevsky. What the movie really chronicles is the history of the country despite being titled by the conqueror's name. We learn very little about the man and not a whole lot about the people in general. This is definitely a stylistic movie that tries to blend Prokofiev's music with the visuals and action in the film, but unfortunately is too bland and straight forward not allowing the viewer to understand the motivations behind the characters. This may be kind of a sign of the times in this country unfortunately it filters into the movie. This was definitely Stalin's child(the state OK'd anything put out at this time), and he may have liked the movie but I did not.
chaos-rampant
Eisenstein was a visionary at this point with an unparalleled grasp of film language. But as with so many of this celebrated sort - Vertov, Welles, Tarkovsky - he had the misfortune of working under illiterate patrons.A complex web of events helps explain this while underlining his own trajectory through film.Soviet cinema was officially killed off by Stalin in 1932. It was asserted that all art henceforth should be something tangible that every prole should understand, nothing abstract in the level of vision. Every notable Soviet film before and after that decree has been hastily lumped together in the West as propaganda, but there is a world of difference between them.Eisenstein's roots are in the first days of the Proletkult and Meyerhold, Proletkult's theater director. Proletkult was a radical movement in the arts that sought to devise a radical new culture to shape the new world, all the curious, iconoclastic things we associate with early communist art come from them. Meyerhold had been working for plays he staged on something he called biomechanics, acting without interior space.Those were unstable and exciting times, the first years following the Revolution. The world seemed like could be new again, actually discovered anew, a fresh start for humanity. It could be anything from one day to the next, and naturally everyone had an opinion. I don't believe we have ever felt something even close to the scale of this in the West, except perhaps briefly and rather schematically in the 60's. Proletkult was formally over by 1920, years before Eisenstein's first film, dissolved in bureaucratic tugs for power. Lenin himself opposed it, a man attuned with traditional ideas for art and beauty and, ironically enough, suspicious of grandiose visions. This happened at a crucial junction for the movement and the arts, when the new state apparatus was being designed. But in just those few years, it spawned something amazing.VGIK was set up in 1919, the famous Soviet film school. Lev Kuleshov taught there, a very astute mind. The effect he pioneered and is named after him exhibited how there is no intrinsic meaning behind a given set of images, a given part of life by extension, beyond what the eye constructed in the present moment. The Soviets had caught perception unawares, using film to examine the controls of it.Eisenstein put all this into effect, the eye as studied by Kuleshov, constructed space from Meyerhold. He went beyond them, introducing the idea of layers from Chinese calligraphy. We got Stachka, one of the most radical debuts in film history.So even though Proletkult was dissolved in the first hours of the movement, its legacy thrived in his films, and those of Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Vertov. The course had been set however, as early as Lenin's decision in 1920, away from experimentation, away from abstract exercise and radical breaks, and into rigid control, propaganda, cultural bureaucracy, another tradition in place of the old. Stalin clamped down on everyone. Trotsky was sent packing, officially signalling the end of plans for world revolution. Eisenstein in the meantime had been to the US and back, now a questionable figure accused by party hacks and broken after the Mexican failure.So, fast forward to 1938, in many ways Eisenstein's path through Soviet film reflects the shift in an entire cosmology that was one-third of the world for the better part of a century.Strike and Potemkin we have classified as propaganda, and a lot of their traditional appeal in film lore has been asserted in spite of their ideological fervor. But did they envision any state or authority beyond the will of the people? Or anything beyond the spontaneous burst for revolution?In keeping with basic principles, Eisenstein had eschewed stars and professional actors in favor of those actual people, and this was a time when Stalin was grooming himself as star of the regiment. World revolution as an idea had been axed with Trotsky and the whole thing was beginning to look more and more like a one man show. Alexander Nevsky was commissioned, after the #1 star in Russian history.Notice then what happens to Eisenstein's technique in context of this repressive environment; it is concrete as before, still impressive on just the scope it is conceived, but now strangely cumbersome, stilted, weighed down by the need for historical momentum. Once again swathes of people are filmed in harsh conflict with ideological opponents, but now they are lead to battle by a true Russian hero, statuesque and virtuous, and are only a class insofar as their nationality is concerned.This is important to note. This is no longer about workers revolting, or an eye constructing worlds. Now there is a face above the crowd, leading, dictating order. Having been deprived then of the enthusiasm to really envision a revolutionary world, the eye turns dull, pompous, merely formal and rehearsing for the occasion.The most famous sequence in the film exemplifies this, the epic battle on the icy river referencing a DW Griffith film. Kuleshov also referenced the same scene in By the Law, but in 1926, he had been free to layer this into a complex metaphysical fabric. Eisenstein's similar scene by contrast unfolds as operatic splendor, no longer modern and forward-looking as was communism in the early days, but conservative, celebrating power, virtue, state.He was awarded the Stalin Prize in '41. The previous year Meyerhold had faced a firing squad as a subversive.
