Overrated and overhyped

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Alexander Nevsky is not a bad film by any means, but not a very good one either; rather a mixed bag of good and bad, resulting from different forces and influences that were pulling Eisenstein in all directions at the time. A pretty uneven film I said; the writing at times is terrible--some lines seem to have been written by Stalin himself--and even the cinematography suffers, specially at the beginning, when everyone talks to the camera instead of to each other. At a finished product, it suggests that at the time E. not only had not retaken full contact with his Russian roots but also that someone was looking over his shoulder, vehemently prodding him into the politically correct direction. But most of all AN shows that his North American experience had yet to sink in and turn into an artistically profitable source of inspiration.The two initial scenes show us what is wrong with AN. The confrontation with the Mongols is badly set; it lacks any atmosphere, which is made even worse by the festive behavior of the Asian. Instead of taking Alex hostage after riddling his men with arrows--as any self-respecting Mongol warlord would have done—he falls in instant adoration of the Russian prince, as any teenage girl faced to Brad Pitt. The scene is badly written, which suggests not only that Eisenstein had still to mature his North American experience, separate the wheat from the chaff, but also that an agenda was at work there, one that certainly was not his. I have nothing against propaganda films--most war flicks are so, after all--but I'd appreciate a little bit of subtlety. After Alex has repeated a thousand times that "German dogs won't be allowed to trample Mother Russia" it becomes rather tiresome. This indicates some clear meddling in the director's work, which it's even more flagrant in the scene when Alex leans over his pal Domash after the forest ambush. He clenches his fist, the camera closes up on his resolute eyes, demeanor, typical Eisenstein set up and then...he ruins the whole scene by blurting out, yet again! the blasted line. I can picture Stalin himself adding that line there. It's clear also that the initial scene was put there solely to display Alex's character, his John Wayne-like poise & assurance, one of the (bad) things Eisenstein brought home from Hollywood, which was clearly compounded by Stalin's insistence in presenting him in such a light. That's why the initial scene is bad, as Stalin wanted Alex set from the beginning as an all mighty superhero hovering above humans and their frailties. No wonder we don't come to feel for him. That's also why powerful, self assured, heroes take all the tension from a flick: either we don't relate to them, we don't feel for them or we know from the start that nothing bad will happen to them anyway. That's something that bogs down AN for its duration. We never feel for Alex, Stalin already did it for us.But there are other flaws, plot holes, apart from the intriguing gaiety of the Mongol chief. For ex. Anani is treated by everyone like trash, kicked around like a dirty sock, called "treacherous, lying, dog"...yet nobody bother to keep tabs on him. Also, the Germans throw to the flames even babies, suggesting they fear their future revenge, yet they merrily let go Vasilisa, unmolested, even after her father had swore her to exact revenge. We see her next in Novgorod happily readying herself for battle. How did she do all that?.This is a very disjointed film, obvious proof of a director venturing into foreign land, figuratively & literally. I already referred to the propaganda elements E. had to incorporate in Alex's character, which forces humane frailties, weaknesses, to drift towards secondary ones. The problem is here he displays another tool he may have brought from Hollywood, but that doesn't suit him well: The comic relief, Gavrilo, a character that more confounds than appeals. He begins in the trappings of a jester and ends up as an heroic knight. I never believed this character, anyway, his Papageno-like humor; his nonchalance even in the midst of a bloody battle. It just didn't look real to me. The same with the proverb--spurting master armorer; his humor falls also flat. Comedy is not Eisenstein's strong suit, neither the light hearted chat of the kind we see between the three men at the beginning and that of Gavrilo and the two women at the end. Most of the scenes between the three, or rather four, specially concerning romance, looked contrived, staged. It's only when real action starts that the movie really picks up.But Eisenstein also brought something good from Hollywood, above all a great sense of spectacle. He dares to stage a battle on the immensity of a frozen like, on a nearby forest. I haven't watched Birth of a Nation but I've seen some clips and the scene battles here-—mainly the charges of cavalry—look as if taken from that movie. But AN goes beyond that, setting the standards for the movie battles of the future. The scene of the Roman legions marching on the hillside, in Spartacus, was clearly inspired by the charge of the Teutonic knights. Only that deserves an extra .5 pt.Despite its flaws still worth watching, mainly for its grandiose battle scenes (and the sad aftermath of death and tears) and a great Prokofieff score. But most of all a pretty entertaining movie. In all 7.5/10.

I'd read several negative reviews. It authors - people who are not familiar with the history of the Battle of the Ice. Alexander Nevsky is a great Russian general and a prince. Alexander Nevsky is not a fictional character of the Ice was really in 1242. This film was propaganda, I agree. But this film does not take off anyway. This is not a Hollywood story, the characters are real, the troops of the Teutonic Order really fell through the ice. This true story was shown in patriotic style. How else in Russia should make films about his great military victories? I really did not like the way shown by German soldiers, just such bots from a computer game. But the film is in the tradition of '30s cinema, technically revolutionary for its time. The film was shot in Russia, where everyone knows who is Alexander Nevsky and what the Battle of the Ice. We must remember that a serious war loomed, the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. German troops had occupied my city too, the war had cost the lives of millions of my countrymen, and touched everyone in our country, the dead were in each family. Our country needs a film like this then perhaps needs now. Probably English subtitles and poor sound spoiled the view of the film. It would have been nice if the story about the ice carnage took European director. My recommendation is "wikipedia "The Battle of the Ice""

Eisenstein was a visionary at this point with an unparalleled grasp of film language. But as with so many of this celebrated sort - Vertov, Welles, Tarkovsky - he had the misfortune of working under illiterate patrons.A complex web of events helps explain this while underlining his own trajectory through film.Soviet cinema was officially killed off by Stalin in 1932. It was asserted that all art henceforth should be something tangible that every prole should understand, nothing abstract in the level of vision. Every notable Soviet film before and after that decree has been hastily lumped together in the West as propaganda, but there is a world of difference between them.Eisenstein's roots are in the first days of the Proletkult and Meyerhold, Proletkult's theater director. Proletkult was a radical movement in the arts that sought to devise a radical new culture to shape the new world, all the curious, iconoclastic things we associate with early communist art come from them. Meyerhold had been working for plays he staged on something he called biomechanics, acting without interior space.Those were unstable and exciting times, the first years following the Revolution. The world seemed like could be new again, actually discovered anew, a fresh start for humanity. It could be anything from one day to the next, and naturally everyone had an opinion. I don't believe we have ever felt something even close to the scale of this in the West, except perhaps briefly and rather schematically in the 60's. Proletkult was formally over by 1920, years before Eisenstein's first film, dissolved in bureaucratic tugs for power. Lenin himself opposed it, a man attuned with traditional ideas for art and beauty and, ironically enough, suspicious of grandiose visions. This happened at a crucial junction for the movement and the arts, when the new state apparatus was being designed. But in just those few years, it spawned something amazing.VGIK was set up in 1919, the famous Soviet film school. Lev Kuleshov taught there, a very astute mind. The effect he pioneered and is named after him exhibited how there is no intrinsic meaning behind a given set of images, a given part of life by extension, beyond what the eye constructed in the present moment. The Soviets had caught perception unawares, using film to examine the controls of it.Eisenstein put all this into effect, the eye as studied by Kuleshov, constructed space from Meyerhold. He went beyond them, introducing the idea of layers from Chinese calligraphy. We got Stachka, one of the most radical debuts in film history.So even though Proletkult was dissolved in the first hours of the movement, its legacy thrived in his films, and those of Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Vertov. The course had been set however, as early as Lenin's decision in 1920, away from experimentation, away from abstract exercise and radical breaks, and into rigid control, propaganda, cultural bureaucracy, another tradition in place of the old. Stalin clamped down on everyone. Trotsky was sent packing, officially signalling the end of plans for world revolution. Eisenstein in the meantime had been to the US and back, now a questionable figure accused by party hacks and broken after the Mexican failure.So, fast forward to 1938, in many ways Eisenstein's path through Soviet film reflects the shift in an entire cosmology that was one-third of the world for the better part of a century.Strike and Potemkin we have classified as propaganda, and a lot of their traditional appeal in film lore has been asserted in spite of their ideological fervor. But did they envision any state or authority beyond the will of the people? Or anything beyond the spontaneous burst for revolution?In keeping with basic principles, Eisenstein had eschewed stars and professional actors in favor of those actual people, and this was a time when Stalin was grooming himself as star of the regiment. World revolution as an idea had been axed with Trotsky and the whole thing was beginning to look more and more like a one man show. Alexander Nevsky was commissioned, after the #1 star in Russian history.Notice then what happens to Eisenstein's technique in context of this repressive environment; it is concrete as before, still impressive on just the scope it is conceived, but now strangely cumbersome, stilted, weighed down by the need for historical momentum. Once again swathes of people are filmed in harsh conflict with ideological opponents, but now they are lead to battle by a true Russian hero, statuesque and virtuous, and are only a class insofar as their nationality is concerned.This is important to note. This is no longer about workers revolting, or an eye constructing worlds. Now there is a face above the crowd, leading, dictating order. Having been deprived then of the enthusiasm to really envision a revolutionary world, the eye turns dull, pompous, merely formal and rehearsing for the occasion.The most famous sequence in the film exemplifies this, the epic battle on the icy river referencing a DW Griffith film. Kuleshov also referenced the same scene in By the Law, but in 1926, he had been free to layer this into a complex metaphysical fabric. Eisenstein's similar scene by contrast unfolds as operatic splendor, no longer modern and forward-looking as was communism in the early days, but conservative, celebrating power, virtue, state.He was awarded the Stalin Prize in '41. The previous year Meyerhold had faced a firing squad as a subversive.

This is, arguably, one of the most influential and best movie pictures of all times. From camera work to acting and plot, nothing was left to chance, all the more so because Eisenstein was one of the most prominent cinema theorists of his time along with Dziga Vertov, another important Russian film maker (mainly documentarist). Unlike many have thought, this movie is definitely about the rise of Nazi Germany and a hymn to the revolution as well as an appeal to keep it true to its original spirit. Eisenstein said it himself as he wrote abundantly on movie making, cinema theory and his own work. Prince Alexander Nevsky was purposely chosen as he had also fought an important war to stop the expansion of southern nations, mainly Germans. One of the precious pearls in this movie is the portrayal of Teutonic knights, with their helmets, medieval in origin, true, but stylized, meaning to represent Nazi troops so as to make it easy for Russian folk to understand the analogy. Not surprisingly, George Lucas would, a few decades later, choose this grim guise to wrap Star Wars' evil personage, Darth Vader. That is precisely why Stalin had some reticence in allowing its release at a time when Nazi Germany was not yet, militarily wise, seen as a real threat. As for camera plans and angles they proved so influential as to pervade the works of the best of later film directors such as Leni Riefenstahl (yes, Nazi Germany favored film director), Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa or Manoel de Oliveira, the oldest film director still alive today (over 100 years old). From the simplest scenes to the battle ones this film is all about perfection and symbolism, drawing the viewer to Nevsky's side and devoiding some historical elements of its importance as is the case of religion which is conveyed as the fuel for Teutonic aggression and stripped of meaning in the Russian side. Most noticeably when, after winning the final battle, Russians enter a church but we never see a priest in sight (nor during the whole of the film, except the afore mentioned enemy ones), no religious symbols, neither does Eisenstein allows the public to so much as have a glimpse of the church's interior. And Yet Nevsky is a Russian saint which says a lot of communism's perspective on that matter. They were prepared to assimilate historical heroes so as to justify their own demeanor, stripping them of any esoteric or religious aura they might have. Ivan Grozny continues that work. In this particular movie Nikolai Cherkasov steals the screen with impressive energy and excellent acting. 10 out of 10 seems too dry for such a film as it will stay in your mind forever with its beautiful camera work and directing.