Alexander Nevsky

Sergei Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev, Mosfilm, 1938. Prince Alexander (Nikolai Cherkasov) is called to meet the Teutonic knights on the ice of Lake Peipus. Sergei Prokofiev wrote the cantata-like score in close timing with the cutting. The battle was shot in summer: melted glass, chalk, and trees stripped of leaves stand in for winter. After the 1939 German-Soviet pact the film was pulled; it returned in 1941. Eisenstein, back in favor after the halted Bezhin Meadow, treats the charge as music and geometry, and the last reel is the point: the ice.