To say that Sergei Eisenstein was out of favour following his aborted Mexican adventure and failed attempt to film Turgenev's 'Bezhin Meadow' would be an understatement but he redeemed himself with 'Alexander Nevsky', an epic, heroic opus filmed in what was for him a more conventional style, free of excessive montage and blessed with a magnificent score by Sergei Prokofiev.
His next project was a three-part life of Tsar Ivan Grozny, a personal hero of Joseph Stalin's who thoroughly approved of Part 1 but was displeased by certain aspects of Part 11 which was not shown until five years after his death. Once the film had been banned work on Part 111 ceased and after Eisenstein's death in 1948 whatever footage that remained was mostly destroyed.
Although it has to be seen as a whole it is Part 11 that is, for this viewer at any rate, the most intriguing as the pomp and circumstance of Part 1 has been replaced by an altogether darker tone with an increasingly paranoid Ivan, conspiracies, plots, implied debauchery and homeroticism, all of which deeply unsettled Uncle Joe, not to mention the director's failure to appreciate the 'progressive nature' of the Oprichniki, Ivan's secret police.
Eisenstein considered that 'the grandeur of the theme necessitated a grandiose design' and it must be said that the stylised, declamatory nature of the acting and its images derived from Grand Opera, Kabuki theatre and Russian icons are not everone's cup of tea whilst many have called the film mechanical and lacking emotional involvement. Pauline Kael went so far as to describe the film as 'a collection of staggering stills' but her opinion can safely be ignored. Its influence on Kurosawa and Welles of course, is there for all to see.
Leading an exceptional cast is the charismatic Nicolai Cherkassov whose intense performance by all accounts left him physically and emotionally drained. The brief sequence filmed in the Agfacolor process captured from the Germans gives us a tantalising glimpse of how Part 111 would have looked.
The extreme architecture, possibly inspired by Dreyer's 'Passion of Joan of Arc', the cinematography of Tisse and Moskvin and not least the contrapuntal score of Prokofiev which molds the music to the images, combine to produce an unique filmic experience, the power of which remains undiminished.
His next project was a three-part life of Tsar Ivan Grozny, a personal hero of Joseph Stalin's who thoroughly approved of Part 1 but was displeased by certain aspects of Part 11 which was not shown until five years after his death. Once the film had been banned work on Part 111 ceased and after Eisenstein's death in 1948 whatever footage that remained was mostly destroyed.
Although it has to be seen as a whole it is Part 11 that is, for this viewer at any rate, the most intriguing as the pomp and circumstance of Part 1 has been replaced by an altogether darker tone with an increasingly paranoid Ivan, conspiracies, plots, implied debauchery and homeroticism, all of which deeply unsettled Uncle Joe, not to mention the director's failure to appreciate the 'progressive nature' of the Oprichniki, Ivan's secret police.
Eisenstein considered that 'the grandeur of the theme necessitated a grandiose design' and it must be said that the stylised, declamatory nature of the acting and its images derived from Grand Opera, Kabuki theatre and Russian icons are not everone's cup of tea whilst many have called the film mechanical and lacking emotional involvement. Pauline Kael went so far as to describe the film as 'a collection of staggering stills' but her opinion can safely be ignored. Its influence on Kurosawa and Welles of course, is there for all to see.
Leading an exceptional cast is the charismatic Nicolai Cherkassov whose intense performance by all accounts left him physically and emotionally drained. The brief sequence filmed in the Agfacolor process captured from the Germans gives us a tantalising glimpse of how Part 111 would have looked.
The extreme architecture, possibly inspired by Dreyer's 'Passion of Joan of Arc', the cinematography of Tisse and Moskvin and not least the contrapuntal score of Prokofiev which molds the music to the images, combine to produce an unique filmic experience, the power of which remains undiminished.