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.
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