Orchestra plays "Alexander Nevsky' (1st review)

I went to hear Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky at Verizon Hall because I've always loved Prokofiev's cantata, drawn from the film score after the fact. I hadn't seen the film in many years, and it remained in my mind as a collection of magnificent but scattered images.

Seeing it anew was quite a shock. It's a pretty crude affair.

Now, I grant that Eisenstein was trying to make a "people's epic," so the lugubrious High Art approach of his Ivan the Terrible films (both of which I happen to like) would probably have fallen flat. Still, time and again I felt that the Nevsky film failed to live up to its score.

Whereas in Ivan certain scenes achieve an operatic grandeur, in Alexander Nevsky the visuals— especially in the climactic battle on the ice— consistently fall short. Prokofiev's menacing score for the charge of the Teutonic Knights suggests a freight train barreling down the tracks, but Eisenstein's speeded-up camera merely makes it look cheesy. The scene in which the knights' infantry form a Roman-type phalanx with their spears and shields is especially risible, sort of like a children's toy run amuck.

Confrontation fizzles

Logically, the film would build to a one-on-one confrontation between Prince Alexander and the Grand Master of the sinister knights; but when they finally do clash, it's over before it's begun.

In this film, Eisenstein seems to feel that there was something to be gained by mocking the enemy and making them look foolish— yet in Ivan he certainly didn't portray Ivan's sinister power-hungry aunt Efrosinia or his friend-turned-traitor Kurbsky into clownish figures.

I suspect he had multitudes of party apparatchiks looking over his shoulder on this film. And no one ever accused Stalin, who apparently was fond of 1930s Hollywood Westerns, of possessing much artistic taste. But in the end, dramatically speaking, if you make your enemy look smaller, you make your victory over them look less than immense.

I waited especially eagerly for the sequence in which the ice breaks, drowning most of the knights in the icy waters of the lake. Certainly the music of the cantata builds this moment up to a shattering climax. But in the film, it's rather ho-hum.

Better as parody

In fact I have to admit that Ken Russell's parody of the scene in the Harry Palmer film Billion Dollar Brain worked better. At least Russell had the sense to use it as a fitting demise for the film's villain, who is last glimpsed screaming in terror as the icy waters close on him.

Eisenstein apparently thought it was better to have the defeated Grand Master paraded through Novgorod. In this scene, Alexander proposes that the surviving knights be held for ransom. The black-robed monk who accompanied them, on the other hand, isn't worth much, so he's allowed to be mobbed by the enraged citizenry. Apparently no one bothered to tell Eisenstein that the Teutonic Knights, like the Templars, were an order of monks— all of them, even the Grand Master!

One of the world's most difficult tasks is to create a really good propaganda film— by which I mean not just a film that sells the message, but also one that's satisfying as a drama as well. Michael Powell did it with The 49th Parallel. In my opinion, Eisenstein failed with Alexander Nevsky. But the music is still smashing— especially when it's heard live.♦


To read another review by Peter Burwasser, click here.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.