Film review: Alexander Nevsky (1938)

This viewing was inspired by an Instagram post of Thomas's where he referenced Alexander Nevsky, being the great-battles-of-history nerd that all his online gaming requires him to be, and I remembered that we had the Eisenstein film as one of the 11 (now 10) remaining unwatched films in our Criterion 50-great-arty-films collection.  Verdict: amazing battle scenes, mixed with blatant (at the time, certainly justified) anti-German propaganda.  Throw in a couple of lovable warriors (Vasily Buslai, the goofier of the two, with unfortunate haircut and facial hair, and Gavrilo Oleksich, the more brooding and noble), both of whom are fighting for the affections of the fair Olga, 

who patriotically promises to wed whichever of them most distinguishes himself in battle for human interest and mild comic relief, and you've got yourself a picture!  One thing that you notice immediately Alexander comes on screen (standing in the river Neva, fishing) is that he's really tall.  He towers over everybody, until he arrives in Novgorod and meets Vasily and Gavrilo, because it turns out the actors were 6'6", 6'4" and 6'4.5".  That's a good basketball team of a cast!

Anyway, the basic premise is that we meet Alexander after he's won a historic victory over the Swedes, but while the Mongols are conquering Russia from one side and the Germans from the other, leaving the hills strewn with corpses.  

He has a surprisingly jocular meeting with some Mongols, when their leader (who has to crane his neck back) asks Alexander to become one of their generals, but he declines.  

He puts off dealing with them, though, to deal with the much nastier Germans, whom we see (led by a sinister religious figure, who has the most amazing face and who is a dead ringer for Emperor Palantine in Return of the Jedi - although in this picture he's not wearing his black cowl and is wearing insignia that are clearly meant to evoke swastikas) 

committing all sorts of atrocities, most notably tossing crying infants into bonfires (nice bit of special effects... I hope).  

Meanwhile, Novgorod is the largest and most prosperous city in the Germans' line of fire, so Alexander heads there, recruiting the peasantry along the way.  We see the people of Novgorod debating whether or not to throw their lot in with Alexander, and surprisingly, a fair number are agin' it, but the man they pick as their general gets up and says that, really, Alexander would be better for the job.  And when Alexander arrives he more or less says I don't care if you're with me because I've got the peasantry (no doubt red meat to the Soviet audience).  Anyway, all of this is just prologue to the battle that is the whole point of the film, which takes place on a frozen lake.  And what a battle it is - seemingly thousands of extras (none of your Lord of the Rings CGI-d soldiers here), actual tactics and just endless thwacking of sword and axe on sword and armor.  I swear, my arm would've been too tired to go on after about 2 minutes.

It's all very black-and-white - poisonous child-murdering invaders who practically have serpents' tongues and cloven feet, but who definitely have some super-cool armor, particularly when it comes to the headgear:

 

We also have a humorous old geezer who tells a "funny" story about a fox chasing a rabbit, only the fox gets stuck and the rabbit... rapes the fox!?!?  He acquits himself well in battle only to be killed by a cheap shot by one of the German head honchos who has surrendered but has a hidden dagger, and our old geezer has chain mail too short to protect his neck (we do get to see some surprisingly graphic - no Hayes Code in the USSR - neck wounds on the dead at the end).  Oh, and there's also a Valkyrie-esque female warrior who is Buslai's consolation when Olga inevitably chooses Gavrilo (to Buslai's mother's great consternation)).  Finally, Alexander's triumphal return (and in contrast to the Germans, the kids love him)

And his last speech to the audience and to the Russian public: "But those who come to us sword in hand will die by the sword! On that Russia stands and forever will we stand!" - a quote so good it is repeated on screen in text right after he says it.  So, overall, if you want an amazing (rather stylized) battle surrounded by various getting-the-gang-together scenes and a good deal of anti-German propaganda, along with a stirring (albeit, on our version, a bit warbly) Sergei Prokoviev score, then look no further!