Sergei Eisenstein

(On TV, December 2021) There are films that are more interesting for their context than their story, and Sergei Eisenstein’s Aleksandr Nevskiy often feels like one of them. A proudly propagandistic film from the pre-WW2 Soviet Union, it’s really not subtle at all about taking aim at the clergy and the Germans as enemies of the Soviet people, and making its protagonist (the titular prince Nevskiy) a paragon of virtue. The first scene has characters blandly stating that the Mongols are not the problem — the Germans are. Later sequences have members of the Teutonic Order clergy sporting a modified swastika on their hats. Much of the film leads (with the era’s limited means) toward the famous Battle on the Ice, in which enemy combatants fall through the frozen crust over Lake Peipus, handing the victory over to the land’s natural owners. (As usual, be wary of learning history from movies — there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the falling-though-the-ice thing was a pure invention from Eisenstein, since then enshrined in legend.)  Technically rough and thoroughly aimed at Soviet audiences, Aleksandr Nevskiy can be a chore to power through — at least until the climactic clash between armies. But the film’s Wikipedia page makes for fascinating reading, as it ties the film over to the changing whims of the Soviet leadership (which briefly established an alliance with Nazi Germany after the film’s release, resulting in a period where the film was pulled from circulation.), details the ways it influenced later depictions of large-scale battles, and ends up being Eisenstein’s best-known film of the sound era. Aleksandr Nevskiy may not always be a lot of fun, but it’s certainly a part of movie history.