Today’s Air Loaf features Max Arbes and CL’s Curt Holman chatting about two foreign films playing this week: Alexander Nevsky and A Christmas Tale.
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BATTLE ROYALE: "Alexander Nevsky" courtesy Corinth Films, Inc.
This year, Russia’s Alexander Nevsky (screening at Emory University on Wed., Dec. 3) celebrates the 70th anniversary of creating one of the most powerful battle scenes ever committed to film. When contending Russian and German armies clash on a frozen lake, director Sergei Eisenstein creates the template for seemingly all cinematic battles to come. You can find Alexander Nevksy’s bloodline in global epics from Ran to Braveheart to Mongol.
Eisenstein is best known for the still-thrilling “Odessa Steps” scene in his silent film Battleship Potemkin. If you’ve ever seen a baby carriage roll down steps into a movie, it’s an Eisenstein reference. In Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein demonstrates his magic with screen composition, editing and crowd control when Prince Alexander (Nikolai Cherkasov) rallies the working Russian folk against rapacious German invaders. Stirring Prokofiev music accompanies the Teutonic charge across the ice, but Eisenstein switches to harrowing ambient noise when the battle is joined, proving his mastery with sound design as well as cinematic visuals.
