Alert: Alexander Nevsky on IFC
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C
Chi City 81
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Bubbler said:
Hey, the Battleship Potemkin kicks ass.
Bubbler
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The Good Doctor said:
I'm just thankful someone here knows who Eisenstein is, much less tossing out one of his movies.
Only seen bits of Potemkin, it's a must-record if it ever pops on one of my movie channels, just as Nevsky is recording now.
Ivan The Terrible could conceivably be the weirdest "great" movie I've seen. It is so thoroughly Russian and expressionist in its way, but not like German silent movies that are more well known for being expressionist.
C
Chi City 81
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Bubbler said:
I've seen Nevsky, and I loved the score. But it was just too over-the-top propagandish (read: Anti-German) for me.
C
Chi City 81
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Bubbler said:
Oh, it served its purpose, no doubt.
C
Chi City 81
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Bubbler said:
I bet Alma's seen it, too.
PCLoadLetter
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Potemkin was fantastic -- and the Odessa Steps sequence is so good, de Palma stole it for the big scene in "The Untouchables."
Bubbler
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Ivan The Terrible, Part II isn't the first movie to use black-and-white and color to accentuate plot points, but its certainly the most different.
The color in that movie (which Eisenstein shot with stolen WWII German cameras) is the weirdest color palate and shadow I've seen in a movie. The only way to describe it is that it's muddy, but in extremely sharp contrast. An oxymoron, but you'd have to see it.
The color in that movie (which Eisenstein shot with stolen WWII German cameras) is the weirdest color palate and shadow I've seen in a movie. The only way to describe it is that it's muddy, but in extremely sharp contrast. An oxymoron, but you'd have to see it.
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Fenian_Bastard
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Bubbler said:
Oh, no you're not.
GREAT action movie. And all those scary Russian faces.
Watching Alexander, I can't help but think how many extras took up arms and were slaughtered over the next seven years. It's chilling.
The thought also haunts me when I watch the propaganda-laced Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal. (If you haven't seen it, the Battle of Zama sequence is outstanding.)
The thought also haunts me when I watch the propaganda-laced Scipio Africanus: The Defeat of Hannibal. (If you haven't seen it, the Battle of Zama sequence is outstanding.)
Melodious Thunk
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This thread brought me out of my spider hole.
Same here. I've had Potemkin queued up in my TiVo Wish List for two years now, and it has never popped up.
IFC has been showing some amazing landmark foreign films recently, thanks to their Janus Film Project. I taped Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" a few weeks ago. It reruns again at 11:15am today, followed by "Black Orpheus" and "Alexander Nevsky."
Next week, IFC is showing Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu. For those not familiar with his work, check out Anthony Lane's recent piece on him in the New Yorker.
http://www.filmforum.org/films/mizoguchi/mizoguchinyorker.html
Here's a sample quote:
There are certainly fertile comparisons to be made between Kurosawa and Mizoguchi; and yet, to those who love the latter, there is no comparison. Kurosawa seems sweaty and overwrought beside the astounding formal finesse of a movie like “Sansho the Bailiff †(1954). I have seen “Sansho†only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal. The film itself is a tale of broken men and women, or of those bent to the breaking point by the harrying furies of society. Kurosawa may have fashioned the thrilling “Throne of Blood†from the plot of “Macbeth,†but Mizoguchi, though he adapted none of the plays, remains the more profound Shakespearean, such are the reversals and accelerations of fortune into which his characters are swept.
Bubbler said:
Same here. I've had Potemkin queued up in my TiVo Wish List for two years now, and it has never popped up.
IFC has been showing some amazing landmark foreign films recently, thanks to their Janus Film Project. I taped Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" a few weeks ago. It reruns again at 11:15am today, followed by "Black Orpheus" and "Alexander Nevsky."
Next week, IFC is showing Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu. For those not familiar with his work, check out Anthony Lane's recent piece on him in the New Yorker.
http://www.filmforum.org/films/mizoguchi/mizoguchinyorker.html
Here's a sample quote:
There are certainly fertile comparisons to be made between Kurosawa and Mizoguchi; and yet, to those who love the latter, there is no comparison. Kurosawa seems sweaty and overwrought beside the astounding formal finesse of a movie like “Sansho the Bailiff †(1954). I have seen “Sansho†only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal. The film itself is a tale of broken men and women, or of those bent to the breaking point by the harrying furies of society. Kurosawa may have fashioned the thrilling “Throne of Blood†from the plot of “Macbeth,†but Mizoguchi, though he adapted none of the plays, remains the more profound Shakespearean, such are the reversals and accelerations of fortune into which his characters are swept.
Bubbler
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Finally had time to watch Nevsky. Fascinating.
It isn't as good as Ivan, and as noted, it was designed from its inception as a propoganda film, but it's a damn effective one. And as it turned out, prophetic too.
The sack and pillage of Pskov has to be up there among cinema scenes that most successfully created the deepest dread. The several-minute opening of the scene, with the ominous Prokofiev music combined with the motionless close-ups of those freaky, Nazi-evocative Teutonic Knights helmets is fantastic stuff ...
Of course, forciably converting Russian toddlers to Catholicism, then throwing them into a fire maxes out the level of madness. Disturbing.
You could see that scenes' influence on later directors, especially Kubrick, in the way it was cut -- with climactic scenes like the death of the martyr of Pskov being abruptly cut with a subtitle and a new scene, it reminded me of The Shining, where many early scenes built to a crescendo and cut away before you could ease your way out of what you just saw.
But I don't think it's propoganda because of the violence it depicts. If anything, it went light with true medieval violence, cities can and often were all but wiped out by invaders. The propoganda comes in with the leniency of Nevsky when Pskov is liberated. I'm calling bull**** that he would all of the sudden be relatively merciful to the Knights, and there's no history to back that up.
Neat film, and as I expected, an interesting piece for the historical film record. Worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing. It's like a Russified Birth Of A Nation -- and just as great and flawed (in its bent).
It isn't as good as Ivan, and as noted, it was designed from its inception as a propoganda film, but it's a damn effective one. And as it turned out, prophetic too.
The sack and pillage of Pskov has to be up there among cinema scenes that most successfully created the deepest dread. The several-minute opening of the scene, with the ominous Prokofiev music combined with the motionless close-ups of those freaky, Nazi-evocative Teutonic Knights helmets is fantastic stuff ...
Of course, forciably converting Russian toddlers to Catholicism, then throwing them into a fire maxes out the level of madness. Disturbing.
You could see that scenes' influence on later directors, especially Kubrick, in the way it was cut -- with climactic scenes like the death of the martyr of Pskov being abruptly cut with a subtitle and a new scene, it reminded me of The Shining, where many early scenes built to a crescendo and cut away before you could ease your way out of what you just saw.
But I don't think it's propoganda because of the violence it depicts. If anything, it went light with true medieval violence, cities can and often were all but wiped out by invaders. The propoganda comes in with the leniency of Nevsky when Pskov is liberated. I'm calling bull**** that he would all of the sudden be relatively merciful to the Knights, and there's no history to back that up.
Neat film, and as I expected, an interesting piece for the historical film record. Worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing. It's like a Russified Birth Of A Nation -- and just as great and flawed (in its bent).
