Sunday Afternoon Cinema

via videosift.com
"Alexander Nevsky"
Communist Propaganda, 1938
Russian with English-subtitles

Eisenstein worked closely with composer Sergey Prokofiev on this film portrait of Alexander Nevsky, the man who led the Russian army to victory over invading Teutonic soldiers in the thirteenth century. Needing to prove himself after being publicly humiliated as out of touch with the revolution, Eisenstein finished the film five months ahead of schedule. Filmmaker Stan Brakhage wrote that in spite of the constant intrusion of government censorship, Eisenstein had nonetheless been successful in creating “sequences as magical as anything else in his work.” Brakhage further praised Eisenstein for his masterful graphing of Prokofiev’s music “to stand for the line of Knights in the image it accompanies -- assuming the viewer would ‘read’ the line of soldiers, left to right . . . making Prokofiev’s eighth notes mark exactly -- assuming average speed of reading -- where Teutonic flags occur in the line of, thus, ‘type.’” Few filmmakers have dared to cut picture to sound in such a dramatic manner. This attention to the marriage of sound and image aligned the film with the aesthetics of both opera and ballet, according to Brakhage, and is an example of the power inherent in the medium when used to its full potential. Alexander Nevsky was a success both in Russia as well as abroad. Originally intended to rally the Russian troops for their impending battle with Germany, the film was temporarily removed from distribution when the Nazis and the Soviet Union signed a pact in August 1939.