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Alexander Nevsky
1938 Action / Drama / History / War
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Credits
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Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein, Dmitri Vasilyev
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Script: Sergei M. Eisenstein, Pyotr Pavlenko
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Photo: Eduard Tisse
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Music: Sergei Prokofiev
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Cast: Nikolai Cherkasov (Aleksandr Nevsky),
Nikolai Okhlopkov (Vasili Buslai),
Andrei Abrikosov (Gavrilo Oleksich),
Dmitri Orlov (Ignat),
Vasili Novikov (Governor of Pskov),
Nikolai Arsky (Domash Tverdislavich),
Varvara Massalitinova (Amelfa Timoferevna),
Vera Ivashova (Olga Danilovna),
Aleksandra Danilova (Vasilisa),
Vladimir Yershov (Von Balk),
Sergei Blinnikov (Tverdilo)
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Country: Soviet Union
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Language: Russian
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Runtime: 112 min; B&W
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Aka: Aleksandr Nevskiy; Александр Невский
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Summary
In 1242, Russia is under attack on two fronts - on the East by Mongol
raiders and on the West by Teutonic knights. Those Russian
leaders who try to strike an alliance with the invaders are regarded
as traitors, those who resist are slaughtered. After the fall of the city of Pskov, Prince
Alexander Nevsky is persuaded to form an army to save his country from
the Teutons.
Review
The fear of an invasion from Nazi Germany in 1938 was the motivating
force behind this lavish historical epic by the great Russian film
director Sergei Eisenstein. The story of the 13th century warrior
prince Alexander Nevsky became a rallying cry for Russians of all ages
to be prepared to take up arms in defence of their country. The
film is strangely prescient, since its cataclysmic ending prefigures
the humiliating defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad in 1942-3.
Alexander Nevsky marked a
significant change in Eisenstein’s approach to filmmaking. This
was partly the result of pressure put on him by his producers at
Mosfilm to make a film that was accessible to the masses, but also
because Eisenstein himself had evolved some of his ideas. He now
saw character and narrative as having far greater importance than
artistic style in the composition of the film - a reversal of the auteur principle. Nowhere is
this more apparent than in the way in which the film is
edited. Eisenstein favours more conventional editing
techniques over the sophisticated montage methods he had developed in
earlier films.
Previously, Eisenstein had relied on a technique known as dialectic montage - the
juxtaposition of contrasting images - to evoke emotion through an
impression of conflict. In Alexander
Nevsky, he favours another, more widely used approach, vertical montage, which seeks to
achieve an organic unity between the various elements of the film, such
as sound and image. The best example of this is the meticulous
alignment of Prokofiev’s masterful score with the images we see on the
screen. The music works to underline the heroism of the gallant
Russian soldiers and to stress the savagery of the child-butchering
Teutons. The sense of emotional cohesion is probably what makes
this Eistenstein’s most lyrical film. The feeling of emotional
conflict, so noticeable in his other films, is curiously muted here.
Another crucial departure from Eisenstein’s earlier work is the use of
a heroic lead character - in this case the Prince Alexander Nevsky - in
place of the collective mass of the proletariat. This reflects a
change in Communist thinking in the 1930s, that ordinary men and women
are not motivated by abstract notions of brotherhood, but by
outstanding individuals - flesh and blood icons, to replace the
religious icons of the past (party leader Josef Stalin being the
obvious example). Nevsky
is the epitome of the proletariat hero - as was the charismatic actor
who played him, Nikolai Cherkassov (who subsequently took the leading
role in Eisenstein’s 1944 film Ivan the Terrible).
Although Alexander Nevsky appears stylistically bland compared with
Eistenstein’s other films - it lacks the harsh realism of Battleship Potemkin (1925) and
the sinister expressionism of Ivan
the Terrible - Alexander
Nevsky triumphs in other areas. The main battle sequence
(staged with thousands of serving Russian soldiers) is one of the most
impressive ever filmed; it is exceptional both in its scale and in its
seemingly relentless energy.
The success of Alexander Nevsky effectively
revived Eisenstein’s faltering career, after six years of
inactivity. It was well-received by critics at home and abroad
and was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1939. The film had to be
withdrawn when peace negotiations were taking place between the Soviet
Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, but was hastily re-released when
hostilities began two years later. Contrary to what might have
been expected, this is not a contrived piece of state-sponsored
propaganda but a deeply felt expression of patriotism, a film whose
appeal extends way beyond the place and time where it was conceived.
© James Travers 2008
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