The Soviet genius Sergei Eisenstein was the rarest of all filmmakers: one who was also afilm theorist. There have been many film critics who became directors; the French NewWave is full of them--François Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard, and so on. Film scholars andhistorians such as Peter Bogdanovich have also become directors. But, Eisenstein was oneof the few theorists who also made films, thus assuring that the impact of his intellect wasfelt on both the page and the screen. He made films out of his theories, and the result foreverchanged the cinema.

Eisenstein is know best for being the director who introduced the theory ofmontage, which is so taken for granted to today that we forget just howrevolutionary it was in the 1920s when, despite the advances of D.W. Griffith, many moviesstill looked like filmed stageplays. As employed his classic silent films Strike(1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925), and October (1927), Eisenstein'stheory of montage editing to create meaning by the linking and, more importantly, thejuxtaposition of different images introduced a new dimension to the language of film thatforever changed it. Eisenstein theorized different categories of montage--metric, rhythmic,tonal, overtonal, and intellectual--which he utilized in his films to great effect, bothaesthetically and politically. He was one of the first filmmakers to truly understand thatpowerful meaning and political ideology could reside in the collusion of images, notnecessarily within the images themselves.

Yet, despite his brilliance and his great success as a Soviet filmmaker renowned throughoutthe world, the 1930s were a terrible decade for Eisenstein. He traveled abroad in the UnitedStates and attempted to make a film about Mexico in 1930, Que Viva Mexico, butfunding was pulled out at the last minute and the film was never completed. He foundhimself increasing persecuted by the despotic Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, which didalways appreciate his collectivist art or his genius; Stalin simply wanted propaganda filmsthat towed the party line and stuck rigorously to the dogmatic tenets of socialist realism.When Eisenstein attempted to make his first sound film, Bezhin Meadow, in1936, his use of naturalistic photography and religious iconography so infuriated Stalin thatthe film was taken away from him and allegedly destroyed.

Thus, it is not surprising that Eisenstein's next film, Alexander Nevsky, was aperfect example of the historical epic as nationalistic propaganda (which differed from hisearlier films, which were socialist rather than nationalist). His life literally depended onpleasing Stalin, and he succeeded mightily by employing the Stalinist emphasis on singular,larger-than-life heroes, rather than the collective efforts emphasized in his silent films.

Yet, the resulting film is not simply a piece of pro-Soviet nationalist ideology, but rather acomplete work of art that also functioned as a rallying cry for a burgeoning socialist nationunder constant threat from fascism in the form of Nazi Germany. Eisenstein, working for thefirst time with sound, employed a beautiful score by Sergei Prokofiev, who had also been inexile throughout the 1930s, that functions as both support and counterpoint to his montageof exquisitely framed images.

Using thematic devices borrowed from traditions of folklore, the film tells the heroic story ofthe titular character, Alexander Nevsky (Nikolai Cherkasov), a 13th-century warrior princewho drove the invading Germans out of Russia. His name, "Nevsky," came from the famehe earned as a military leader who defeated invading Swedish forces at the mouth of theNeva River in 1240. However, when the film opens in 1242, Alexander is essentially livingin exile as a fisherman in a portion of Eastern Russia dominated by the Mongols.

Alexander is soon called back into service when German Teutons begin moving north intoRussia. As the film was made before Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Adolf Hitler in1939, the Germans are portrayed as the most vicious sort. Dressed in armor that includesbucket-like helmets to completely hide their faces, the Germans are depicted in nonhuman,mechanical terms. When they defeat the city of Pskov, they are shown amid the flattened,smoking ruins of the great city brutally slaughtering captured civilians and throwing Russianchildren in huge bonfires, scenes that still retain a great deal of shock value today.

The links between the German Teutons of the 13th century and Nazi Germany of the early20th century is plain to see, which is why Stalin banned Alexander Nevsky aftersigning the nonaggression pact. He was aware of just how powerful the film was, not onlyin terms of its base characterization of the Germans as animals, but in its overall impact.Eisenstein was incapable of making a film that was not a complex work of art, and hemarshaled all his filmmaking prowess for Alexander Nevsky, which is,narratively speaking, one of his simplest films.

The majority of attention paid to the film has focused on the extraordinary 30-minute Battleon the Ice sequence, in which Alexander's army faces the Germans on a frozen lake.According to Eisenstein in his book The Film Sense, it is in this scene that "theaudio-visual aspect of Alexander Nevsky achieves its most complete fusion." TheBattle on the Ice is an incredible example of how the combination of image and music canevoke deep and varied emotions; it is a masterpiece of matching both concordant anddiscordant visuals and sounds. Eisenstein's careful compositions are matched to Prokofiev'sinspired musical score to create a sequence that is both horrifying and comical, while alwaysemphasizing Alexander's (and thus the Soviet Union's) nationalist fervor and resilience evenunder the most dire circumstances.

In Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein proved once again that he could bring out hisown vision while working within the rigid constraints of Stalinism. Although he was exiled,publicly humiliated, and risked death for many years, Eisenstein proved time and time againthat his brilliance could not be fully muted.

©2001 James Kendrick