What happened when the brilliant Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and the great composer Sergei Prokofiev began working together to make a film based on the greatest triumph of the legendary warrior-saint Alexander Nevsky was more than a mere collaboration on a score by a director and a musician at the peak of their powers. It was the creation of a total work of art, an integration of the most progressive mind in cinema and one of the most forward-looking men in concert music at the time into something that was meant to be more than a whole, but an entire unified work that transcended both of the elements that made it up. And, thanks to the time and place it was made, it very nearly was never seen or heard by anyone.
When Eisenstein began work on what would be his most popular sound film, the entire Soviet Union was living in dread of an attack by Nazi Germany. They were trusted by no one, and the longstanding emnity between the two countries was such that the director left no doubt who was represented by the movie's brutal Teutonic Christian warriors, who wore modified versions of the German Army's field helments and who were led by priests bearing swastikas on their holy garments. The great Russian hero/saint Alexander Nevsky leads his savagely mistreated people in a glorious victory against the Teutonic would-be conquerers, set to a stirring, haunting, unforgettable symphonic score by Prokofiev. Unfortunately, Josef Stalin didn't trust Eisenstein any more than he trusted anyone else, and he rushed an early print into production before Prokofiev had a chance to finish it. The finished product featured not the full and rich orchestral version of the music, but a truncated cantata that, while worthwhile on its own, doesn't fully convey the glory and passion the two artists struggled to squeeze into the film.
And it didn't stop there: just prior to Alexander Nevsky's scheduled release, Russia and Germany shocked the world by signing the Von Ribbentrop Pact, which assured a peaceful alliance between the two nations. Both Hitler and Stalin knew it was a bogus treaty that wouldn't last -- Hitler used it to buy time to gain victories in Western Europe, and Stalin used it to build up his nation's military might for the attack he knew was inevitable -- but because Alexander Nevsky openly mocked the wisdom of attempting to negotiate with the evil Teutonic forces, Stalin had it suppressed, since it didn't fit the new world order. Very little good came of the ultimate betrayal of the pact by Hitler and the invasion of Russia by German forces, but it did eventually lead to the release of the now prescient-seeming Alexander Nevsky, which perfectly suited the wartime mood of Russia and served as a powerful propaganda tool in stirring the passions of the citizenry against the Nazi intruders.
The version that was released then, of course, featured the bastardized cantata version of Sergei Prokofiev's epic score, as would all prints for over fifty years. It wasn't until 1995, decades after both the composer and Sergei Eisenstein were dead, that a remastered version of the film -- this time featuring Prokofiev's now-classic orchestral score in all its wonder -- was released, but now it can be seen, and heard, anytime exactly as its makers intended. And if you're lucky enough to see one of the occasional screenings of the film that are held with a full orchestra playing the entire score live and in time with the movie, you've had one of life's greatest and most memorable pleasures.
BEST TRACKS: The fourth movement ("Arise, Ye Russian People", is an inspiring and memorable blend of a militaristic march and a patriotic anthem consisting of elements of traditional Russian folk music, and the sixth ("The Field of the Dead") is an incredibly moving mezzo-soprano operatic solo sung by a young woman who heartbreakingly winds her way through the aftermath of the Battle of Lake Peipus, searching for the body of her lover and kissing the eyes of the dead as she does so. But it's the fifth movement ("The Battle on the Ice") that is the most memorable, the most stunning, and the most perfect in how it integrates image and sound: as Nevsky's armies engage the Teutonic knights in an unforgettable clash on a frozen lake, it shifts from a calm, almost hypnotic introduction to a nearly atonal cacaphony once the battle begins. Breathtaking, especially in the premeire recording, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
