Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Russian Movie Classic: Alexander Nevsky

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Russian Movie Classic: Alexander Nevsky

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After move than six years of unproductivity, not all of it voluntary, Sergei Einsenstein, the D. W. Griffith of the Russian screen, has returned to party favor and to public honors with "Alexander Nevsky," a rough-hewn monument to national heroism which had its New World unveiling at the Cameo last night. This is the picture which saved Eisenstein's face, and possibly his hide, after his "Bezhun Lug" was halted after two years' shooting because of its allegedly unsympathetic treatment of the Communist revolution. It is the picture which prompted Josef Stalin to slap its maker on the back and exclaim, "Sergei, you are a true Bolshevik." And it is a picture, moreover, which sets up this morning an unusual problem in reviewing.

For Eisenstein's work can no more withstand the ordinary critical scrutiny, a judgment based on the refinement and subtlety of its execution than, say, the hydraulic sculpture and rock-blasting that Gutzon Borglum is dashing off on Mount Rushmore. Eisenstein is sublimely indifferent to detail, whether narrative or pictorial. His minor characters are as outrageously uni-dimensional as those Griffith created for "Intolerance" and "Birth of a Nation." He is patently unconcerned about a change from night to day to night again during the space of a two-minute sequence, and if it pleases him to bring on torchbearers at midday, simply because the smoke smudge is photographically interesting, he is not deterred by any thoughts of their illogic.

His concern, obvious from the start, is only with the broad outline of his film, its most general narrative and scenic contours and with a dramatic conflict arising, not out of the clash of ideas or ideologies (although these have been unsubtly appended), but from the impact of great bodies of men and horse. His picture, whatever its modern political connotation, is primarily a picture of a battle and it must stand, or fall, solely upon Eisenstein's generalship in marshaling his martial array. And of his magnificent pictorial strategy there does not appear to be any question: it is a stunning battle, this re-enactment of his of the beautiful butchery that occurred one Winter's day in 1242, when the invading Teutonic knights and the serfs, mujhiks and warriors of Novgorod met on the ice of Lake Peipus and fought it out with mace and axe, with pike and spear and broadsword.

The Russians won by might and strategy and the collapse of the ice under the weight of German armor, and Prince Alexander rings out the defiant charge, "Go home and tell all in foreign lands that Russia lives. Let them come to us as guests and they will be welcome. But if any one comes to us with the sword he shall perish by the sword. On this the Russian land stands and will stand." So has Eisenstein discharged his party duty; and so the comrades at the Cameo cheered last night and outthrust their chins at Hitler. Which is all right, too, since it pleases them.

But no propagandistic drum-beating is more than a muffled thump against the surge of Eisenstein's battle. Nor are his people much more than specks upon the bloody ice. Nikolai Cherkassov's Alexander is an exception, since both the role and its player are cast in the heroic mold. But the others, simply through their creator's indifference to their needs, are caricatures (like the Teuton priests), or gargoyles (like the traitors, spies and enemy knights), or simpering nothings (like the little heroine) or mere focal points for watching the display of medieval arms (like the rival Russian soldiers). It is impossible not to admire Eisenstein's colossal unconcern with these refinements of film-making, not to marvel at his stylistic insistence that all people walk along a sky-line, and not to wish, in the same breath, that more directors had his talent for doing great things so well and little things so badly.

ALEXANDER NEVSKY, from a story by Sergel Eisenstein and D. I. Vassillev; directed by Eisenstein and Peter A. Pavlenko; musical score by Sergei Prokofiev; produced by Mosfilm Studios in the U. S. S. R.; released here by Amkino. At the Cameo.
Prince Alexander Nevsky . . . . . Nikolai Cherkassov
Vassily Buslai . . . . . N. P. Okhlopkov
Gavrilo Olexich . . . . . A. L. Abrikossov
Master Armorer . . . . . D. N. Orlov
Governor of Pskov . . . . . V. K. Novikov
Nobleman of Novgorod . . . . . N. N. Arski
Mother of Buslai . . . . . V. O. Massalitinova
Olga, a Novgorod girl . . . . . V. S. Ivasheva
Vassllissa . . . . . A. S. Danilova
Master of the Teutonic Order . . . . . V. L. Ershov
Tverdillo, mayor of Pskov . . . . . S. K. Blinnikov
Anani, a monk . . . . . I. I. Lagutin
The Bishop . . . . . L. A. Fenin
The Black-robed Monk . . . . . N. A. Rogozhin