ALEKSANDR NEVSKY (1938) *** Russian variation on the favourite British theme,"Germans Behaving Badly." Some Russian men are standing around a lake fishing in dresses. One declines an invitation to enter the Mongol Horde as general, which works out well for the Rus' when the Germans show up. Sergei Eisenstein had a brilliant eye for detail and contrast-every single frame would look very nice as a dormitory wall poster. The clouds, the ice flows, the pointy helmets, beards, pigtails, smoke, horses, swaying trees...you don't just aim a camera and shoot stuff like this by accident. Eisenstein also understood that since battles, in reality, take more than the five minutes typically allocated to them, you have to keep setting up and run the cameras for a long time, and then paste rather than cut in the editing booth. The result is an ice battle that may seem endless-much like it no doubt did for the participants-but has the aesthetic effect of releasing several thousand winged and aggressive goshawks into the audience. Sergei Prokofiev's music, which added drama, muscle and pathos to some of the earlier scenes and landscapes, inexplicably takes on a jaunty air for portions of the battle, the effect of which being, when combined with the pointy helmets (some bearing horns), not completely different from something that Monty Python frequently hinted at. It's all naked propaganda, of course. Stalin knew that Hitler was coming, and so was out to remind the proletariat what the Germans were usually like when they came to call. The result is that little effort is brought to bear on the plot, and the entirety of the action takes place exclusively on the surface. That doesn't ruin everything, it just imposes severe limitations. Associated activity: Try striding around the house making bold and dramatic pronouncements, like Nicolai Cherkassov. "Let the children run the television for awhile, for they shall inherit the world we're building." "Woman! Run the water, for my throat is dry and my belly is cold." Or, "Find my hat, for these ears will now listen to Waylon!"
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