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Another reason to celebrate 1939, that unforgettable year for movies, 1939, is that other milestone film, Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, 1938 which was first screened in the US in 1939.
D.W. Griffith and Sergey Eisenstein are venerated as two of the greatest early innovators of cinema. Griffith created the first feature film in 1915, The Birth of a Nation. Eisenstein created a highly influential editing technique called "montage" that is used by filmmakers to this day, and is on brilliant display in his 1938 masterpiece, Alexander Nevsky. If we credit Griffith with inventing the language of film, by pioneering such techniques as close-ups and tracking shots, Eisenstein gave film its elements of grammar.
This was the great Eisenstein’s first sound film, so he enlisted well known composer Sergei Prokofiev as a full collaborator in the effort. What resulted was perhaps the world’s first manifestation of a true Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork), with music and film completely synthesized into one entity.
Richard Wagner first used the term Gesamtkunstwerk in 1851 to refer to a performance that combines all the arts, including the performing arts (for example music, theater, and dance), literature (including poetry), and the visual arts (for example: painting, sculpture, and architecture). The gesamtkunstwerk was to be the clearest and most profound expression of art. But his concept had to wait until the advent of sound film to be fully realized.
No filmmaker before or since has shown a greater understanding for music than Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein. His reverence for music was so great that in some cases he was willing extend or shorten the film’s visual dimensions in order to keep the musical image intact. In almost all previous films, the score was composed after the entire film was photographed and edited. There are sequences of Nevsky that Eisenstein conceived and photographed after Prokofiev composed the music. The visual aspects of the film do not take precedence over the music.
John Goberman writes that Nevsky was a true collaboration of composer and director, of film and music. Clearly, Eisenstein had confidence that music must be and organic part of the film experience, and no composer and director had ever worked so closely before, or probably since. Nevsky has been considered a “film-opera”, and more recently, won the dubious honor of being called the first music video. Composer André Previn described it as “The best film score ever written is trapped inside the worst soundtrack ever recorded” The Soviet film studios were forced by Stalin to only use equipment of Russian manufacture, which was ten years behind the state of the art systems in Hollywood. Because of this Prokofiev's music is badly degraded by the original soundtrack recording, which suffers from extreme distortion and limited frequency response, as well as cuts to the original score to fit scenes that had already been shot.
The Alexander Nevsky score has influenced many contemporary composers. Composer John Williams borrowed Prokofiev’s menacing bass theme for his famous shark's attack leitmotiv in Jaws (1975). Howard Shore’s monumental music for the three Lord of the Rings films would not have been possible without the influence of Prokofiev’s Nevsky score.
Alexander Nevsky is set in Russia, in 1242, as the nation is under the grip of the Mongol hordes ; with the threat of an impending attack from the Teutonic Knights. The victor over the Swedes at the Battle of the River Neva in 1240, Prince Alexander Nevsky is chosen (played convincingly by the regal Nikolai Cherkasov), forms an army, then defeats the German invaders in the decisive “ice battle” on frozen Lake Peipus. Nevsky’s battle scenes have influenced many later screen battles, including Laurence Olivier’s Henry V and Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight.
With the Germans at the Soviet gates in 1938 Nevsky had special resonance to Russian audiences. However, with the signing a non-aggression pact with the Nazis in the summer of 1939, the film suddenly was sending the wrong message, and Stalin banned it. But in a classic case of life imitating art, Nevsky gained new popularity when the Germans invaded Russia in 1941. And Prince Nevsky’s prophesy was fulfilled again, “He who comes to us with the sword shall perish by the sword.”
TCM’s Paul Tatara observes that “Eisenstein's pictures taught directors how to pull a psychological response from audiences through the careful sequencing and spacing of images. He might not have been much of an entertainer, but he knew how to play an audience's emotions like a violin.” Eisenstein’s influence can be clearly seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s shower sequence in Psycho 1960 and Francis Ford Coppola’s dedication montage at the end of The Godfather 1972. Eisenstein’s two warriors Vasili and Gavrilo are used for comic relief; they are engaged in a continual competition to win the hand of the maiden Olga. Peter Jackson uses the dwarf Gimli and the elf Legolas in a similar friendly rivalry in The Two Towers 2002.
Nevsky was a great success; it resurrected Eisenstein’s career, which had suffered from a host of major dissapointments; the abandoned Que Viva Mexico project in Mexico, Hollywood's rejected An American Tragedy and the unfinished Bezhin Meadow in Moscow.
Alexander Nevsky is available on DVD at Moviesunlimited.com. Sergei Prokofiev later based a cantata on the film score; it is available at amazon.com.
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