Watch Alexander Nevsky For Free

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Absolutely Fantastic

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I'm wondering how many people first dub the "Alexander Nevsky" a propaganda movie and then go on by telling the historical background so wrong and schematically that no wonder they miss the civilization message of the movie. Back at the times described, Russia was facing 2 threats - from the pagan Mongol hordes and from the Christian Europe represented by Rome. Important thing is that Catholic Rome offered Russia military help against pagans under the condition that Russia faithful to Orthodox Christianity will pledge it's loyalty to Rome, to Pope, and to the Latin heresy. So that was the choice for young Alexander Nevsky and other Russian leaders. And some were gone for Latin heresy and for kissing the Pope's shoe. But not Alexander Nevsky. Russia then was not in the state to overcome the Mongolian hordes and Alexander had to show loyalty to the Mongolian Horde in order to prevent the massive Mongolian forays and overkill of Russian people. However Mongolians didn't require from Russians a turn into paganry. So Alexander refused loyalty to Rome and stood with Orthodox Christian Faith as the only truthful and salvating. If you apply this historical background to the "Alexander Nevsky" movie by Eisenstein you will see that it is a brilliant cinematographic rendition of the realities described above through the story of battle with Teutonic Knights ? I think it takes a master to tell the entire story by retelling only one episode. Is it a propaganda that the historical episodes shout out to one another ? And back in 1938 Soviet Russia was in premonition of German nazi invasion.

The story of how a great Russian prince (Nikolai Cherkasov) led a ragtag army to battle an invading force of Teutonic Knights.After August 23, 1939, when the USSR signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which provided for non-aggression and collusion between Germany and the Soviet Union, "Alexander Nevsky" was removed from circulation. But the situation reversed dramatically on June 22, 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and the film rapidly returned to Soviet and western screens.Understanding the film in context is important. We could look at it as merely a historical battle of the Russians, Germans and Mongols... and we can certainly enjoy the movie in this context. But it is no accident that the movie was made in 1938, at a time shortly before Russia was to take on Nazi Germany. What better way to excite the Russian people than show them what one of their ancestors did to the Germans?

In the late 1930s, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were already deadly enemies, ideologically and in reality in the Spanish Civil War, and Hitler was orating expansively about conquering and enslaving "inferior" Slavs and colonizing the East, quite like the Catholic Teutonic Knights had attempted to do on their Eastern Crusades against Orthodox Slavs.Film-making was still in its infancy with creative geniuses exploring all its potential. One of those geniuses was Sergey Eisenstein, who (after misadventures in the West) directed one of the greatest patriotic films of all time, Alexander Nevsky.And Sergey Prokofiev's musical score splendidly heightens the film's impact and has become treated as classical music itself (leading me to wonder why American film scores aren't treated the same way).With war between Greater Germany and the Soviet Union appearing imminent, this story was an appeal to Russians' ethnic tradition of endurance, resistance, and victory against aggression from the West.The Teutonic Knights appear formidable and cruel, dressed in heavy armor and helmets (including one with a hand giving an obviously Nazi salute) and throwing babies into the flames of the taken and destroyed city of Pskov. Panicked, the city fathers of Novgorod go to Prince Aleksandr Nevskii, asking him to raise an army of peasants and nobles to fight the Teutons and save Novgorod ... and Russia ... from enslavement.And this he does. Some of the filmed scenes are fascinating, of The Battle on Ice - on what is now Lake Chud, or Peipus as you prefer - for example. Armies are fighting on ice, and when that breaks under the heavier German armor you see knights and men at arms slipping and sliding down into the icy water to drown. (The battle on ice scene in Jerry Bruckheimer's recent film King Arthur is directly reminiscent.) Some of the Germans, like the priests and organist, are ridiculed caricatures, and the Russian traitors are dealt with contemptuously - and theatrically. One of the funniest and presumably unrehearsed shots is of Nevsky and his aide riding toward the camera across the ice before the battle. The aide's horse (and the aide) slip on the ice and go sprawling, then to re-mount and ride on.But the message of the film - which is no less timely today, with NATO threatening Russia with political agitation in the Ukraine and with (offensive) tank maneuvers in the Baltic countries - is, as Aleksandr (actor Nikolai Cherkasov) says ... to us in the West ... "Go tell all in foreign lands that Russia lives! Those who come to us in peace will be welcomed as guests. But those who come to us sword in hand will die by the sword! On that Russia stands and forever will we stand!" Thus, it was no mere coincidence that in April 1999 - when we were betraying Bush1's reassurance to Gorbachev (that we would not take advantage of Russia's weakness while it attempted to demilitarize and democratize) by aggressively/illegally forcing the Kosovo war on its protégé Serbia with Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty - Russian film director A. Andronnikov donned medieval armor and rode a horse to fire an arrow onto the door of the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Moscow with the message "Those who act against Slavs by the sword will die by the sword." And in this context, we should also be remembering that Russia is a nuclear superpower and has already directly/domestically fought and survived total war, unlike us.Readers here might be interested in my memorial dedication to my free print-and-play boardgame Stalingrad: Gorod Smerti on my CoatneyHistory webpage.

It is important to realise that Eisenstein was a committed Marxist film maker who held some very specific and particular theories about what film could achieve, and how.It is simply idle to compare Alexander Nevsky negatively with anything from a similar period in the US; this film comes from the oldest film school in the world, from another continent, from an entirely different approach to cinema.To appreciate this film a little more, try finding out about Pudovkin's and Kuleshov's theories of montage, for example, or read the Wikipedia entry on Marxist Film Theory. If you're feeling really bold, you might even investigate the triadic forms of Hegelian dialectic.It follows that if you watch this film without some understanding of Eisenstein's ideas and ideals, you probably won't get it. In Alexander Nevsky the main characters aren't playing themselves, they are meant to be distillations of their nation's character. Nevsky and his generals are deliberately shown larger-than-life, because they represent stylised, heroic aspects of the entire Russian people.The acting isn't wooden, it's meant to be slightly mannered. It represents a completely different school from the more naturalistic, narrative style which Hollywood was rapidly adopting. Eisenstein's films are especially designed *not* to be realistic. If anything seems somewhat "obvious", whether lighting or language or a pose struck by an actor, it's meant to be that way. Eisenstein was one of the early proponents of film as an art form, not just as entertainment.If the editing sometimes seems to consist of a clash of images, well, that's the idea. Shots are meant to contrast with each other, Eisenstein's films contain and embody elements of a political/philosophical argument, namely Marxist dialectic.So sit back, shout hurrah for Russia and her folk-hero defenders, boo at the cowardly nobles and the Teuton invaders, and enjoy the difference.