A celebrated director is tough to critique, as we'll be too tough or too lenient. I think it's best to just forget who directs this.
This has all the makings of epic propaganda, of high adventure.
Alexander is a war hero, and is called upon to fight the Tuetonic knights of Germany, who invade their land.
The chief plot here becomes the subplot of a comic romantic triangle, however, and the interweaving of this is probably the only thing that saves this movie from fairly heavy ennui.
We don't mind the Teutonic knights being evil, or Germans being the bad guys, but they are portrayed in a way that makes no sense. For some reason a papal court leads the knights in evil. Not only did the papacy have nothing to do with Hitler, and not only did Hitler persecute all theists, but this had nothing to do with the propaganda needs at the time. The best guess here is that Russia didn't want to offend the rest of the East.
Aside from the propaganda, some things work. Alexander is well photographed throughout. Eisenstein's bright spot is in highlighting his hero.
The rest of the movie is fairly dull, a struggle to get through. This was made in days of movie houses, so it is understandable that much of the movie is filler space for people to go to the lobby and buy popcorn and soda. This movie must have sold tons of popcorn and soda, because 50% of it is "walk out and buy popcorn and soda" time.
Eisenstein doesn't flair as a director, but does have a knack for cameras. Use of cameras seems to be his forte.
This has all the makings of epic propaganda, of high adventure.
Alexander is a war hero, and is called upon to fight the Tuetonic knights of Germany, who invade their land.
The chief plot here becomes the subplot of a comic romantic triangle, however, and the interweaving of this is probably the only thing that saves this movie from fairly heavy ennui.
We don't mind the Teutonic knights being evil, or Germans being the bad guys, but they are portrayed in a way that makes no sense. For some reason a papal court leads the knights in evil. Not only did the papacy have nothing to do with Hitler, and not only did Hitler persecute all theists, but this had nothing to do with the propaganda needs at the time. The best guess here is that Russia didn't want to offend the rest of the East.
Aside from the propaganda, some things work. Alexander is well photographed throughout. Eisenstein's bright spot is in highlighting his hero.
The rest of the movie is fairly dull, a struggle to get through. This was made in days of movie houses, so it is understandable that much of the movie is filler space for people to go to the lobby and buy popcorn and soda. This movie must have sold tons of popcorn and soda, because 50% of it is "walk out and buy popcorn and soda" time.
Eisenstein doesn't flair as a director, but does have a knack for cameras. Use of cameras seems to be his forte.