Secrets of the Sahara - Le Désert and L'Atlantide

Secrets of the Sahara !  Two magnificent evocations of the Sahara and its seductive mysteries : Félicien David's Le Désert (1844) an ode-symphonique, and Jacques Feyder's film L'Atlantide (1921).  Both are long term favourites, but the soundtrack in the restored version of the movie is pretty banal, so I muted and played Félicien David's Le désert instead.  The combination worked extremely well !

Perhaps it's because the rhythms of Le désert so strongly resemble the rhythms of a caravan of camels marching single file through the desert. Scored for narrator, orchestra, tenor and choir, the piece unfolds at a steady pace, unhurried yet purposeful.  For thousands of years, caravans like these have crossed the desert : it is as if  the endless sand dunes (depicted by the strings) defy Time itself ; the tracks of the caravan erased as soon as the caravan has passed.  David lived in Eygpt from 1833-35 so the atmospheric exoticism feels drawn from lived experience. Le désert  was sensationally successful in its time, and was to influence the whole genre of French orientalism. If it isn't as well known today, other than to fans of the genre, this might be because it doesn't fit modern ideas of form. David wrote operas, but Le désert is neither opera nor conventional concert piece and requires fairly large forces which make it relatively tricky to programme. In David's time, this form was relatively common (think Berlioz) so it needs to be appreciated as such.  This means performances of a vey high and idiomatic standard.

David's depiction of the sound of Arabic/North African music aligns to sounds very different from the western tonal scale.  The role of narrator is fundamental, holding the piece together and giving it shape.  Dawns rise and nighgt descends : As darkness falls,  the tenor sings the exquisite "O Nuit!"(Hymne à la nuit), suggesting the night sky with boundless horizons. This song is a tour deforce for a very high tenor or countertenor in the tradition of Grand Opéra. By far the best recording to get is the one with Cyrille Dubois and Zachary Wilder, tenors; Jean-Marie Winling, speaker; Accentus, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, conducted by Laurence Equilbey from 2015.  The few copies left on the market retail over £50 so if you have it already, treasure it and accept no imitations.  Dubois's timbre is unique. His voice soars to stratospheric heights, then swoops downwards while remaining elegant. "Le chant du muezzin" resembles the call of a muezzin, carrying over great distances, calling the faithful to mark the start of a new day. Another reminder of the vast distances of the desert, and of the timelessness of experience. 

Eighty years forward to Jaques Feyder's film L'Atlantide,  innovative on many levels.  This, too was innovative, shot on location in Algeria in the desert, employing Algerians in major supporting roles and dozens of locally-recruited extras . No fake blacking up, and earnings for local people. the difference between French colonialism and other forms of colonialism, including Hollywood could not be more pointed.  The sand dunes themselves provide an underlying narrative, which no set of the time could imitate.  The scenery is authentic, too,  showing native villages as they were at the time, and spectacular mountain cliffs.  Even the indoor scenes were assembled on site, using regional textiles like carpets, combined with stylized designs reminiscent of the fashion for "primitive" alien cultures, that made the Ballets Russe so popular. To audiences in 1921, this must have been a revelation to people who weren't used to seeing foreign places in such deatail, or, indeed, to moving images.  L'Atlantide became a box office hit, also starting a trend for films set in exotic places, like The Sheik (1926) with Rudolph Valentino, and Pabst's 1932 remake of L'Atlantide starring Brigitte Helm, both made with assumptions that western values went unquestioned.

Like David's Le désert, Feyder's L'Atlantide employs cyclic narrative. A Frenchman (Lt Saint-Avit) is found wandering in the desert, maddened by thirst and bizarre visions.  Only towards the end do we realise  he's telling his tale back to front. Back to the beginning : he's invalided back to France under a cloud.  suspected of being involved with the mystery disappearance of his friend and mentor, Captain Morhange. Two years previously, a French expedition had been massacred  and the leader Lieutenant Massard had been captured.  Morhange and Saint-Avit approached the desolate mountains of Tidefest, taking shelter in a cave at the approach of sandstorm. Inside, they found insciptions in early Greek with the name "Antinea". Danger lurks. Their faithful guide is poisoned and they turn to a Tarqui from Haggar, Cegheir ben Cheik who suddenly appears, to lead them deeper into the caves below the mountains. Cegheir ben Cheik intoxicates them with hashish. He's smoking Lt. Massard's pipe.  The Frenchmen are catured and taken to the palace of Ahaggar. Both men are bathed, massaged and treated well but they don't know where they are, or why.  In the place’s archive, they meet a librarian who tells them that they are in the centre of Atlantis, ruled by Altinea, descendent of the first Atlanteans. He takes them to a tred marble room filled with solid gold sacrophagi and pins a name on the latest arrival "Lt. Massard", whom Morhange had seen jumping to his death. These are the husbands of Altinea, who die, insane, when she rejects them.  Only one has ever escaped and he made his way back, unable to break the spell. 

Altinea wants Morhange but he will not be seduced. Altinea is like a wild animal, slithering like a serpent, eyes always alert to her prey.  Those palpitations might have seemed erotic in a more buttoned up era, but to modern eyes, they're overacted. still, she must have titilliated the audiences  of 1921 who thought vamp was sexy. Why doesn't Morhange respond ? In France, he had decided to take holy orders as a monk, but the Abbott told him to return to Algeria first, to test his destiny. Hence the crucifix and beads (not a rosary) he wears, which is not standard uniform. To get revenge, she feeds Saint-Evit narcotic cigarettes and gets him to smash Morhange's skull with a silver hammer. Yet Morhange forgives him, as Christ did.  The original novel, by Pierre Benoit, would have appealed to audiences brought up on Catholic morality. Rejection makes Altinea mad with grief: she sees crucifixes shining everywhere and lets Morhange be buried according to his own religion.   Luckily for Saint-Avit, he's been befriended by Tanit-Zerga, Altinea's assistant, who wants to escape and return to her home  in Gao, from which she was taken in a raid by slavers. She arranges a camel, and the two make a plucky escape, aided by Cegheir ben Cheik.  In the desrt, though, their camel dies, and when they reach a well, it's dried out. Tanit-Zerga dies, with a mirage of Gao in her mind. Thus we return to the beginning, when Saint-Avit was found, lost in the desert.  But, like Morhange and others before him, the spell of Altinea haunts him, and he wrangles a posting back to the desert, knowing full well that he is compelled by some unknown, irrational force. 

Armas Järnefelt : Song of the Scarlet Flower

Armas Järnefelt : Song of the Scarlet Flower, (Sängen om den eldröda blomman) from Ondine, marks the centenary of the filmn of the same name, and serves as a reminder of the importance of Nordic countries in the history of cinema. It is also a chance to hear the music of Armas Järnefelt , the long-term conductor of the Royal Swedish Opera, and a member of the Järnefelt family who played an important role in the development of Finnish nationalism. Järnefelt's father was General August Järnefelt,  who promoted the Finnish langauge. His brother Eero was a painter, and his sister Aino  married Jean Sibelius.

In the first decades of cinema, Scandinavian and Finnish film makers were in the vanguard, paving the way for masters like Viktor Sjöström, Carl Th. Dreyer and later Ingmar Bergman. Song of the Scarlet Flower, directed by Maurice Stiller (1883-1928) was a milestone in Nordic cinema history. Released in April 1919, it was an instant sensation, a box office success that was screened in 40 countries.   It was an ambitious project, the first full-length Swedish film to have music written specially for it.   Though Järnefelt was primarily a conductor, he had trained with Busoni and Massenet and composed, especially in the early years of his career.  Ondine has a set of Järnefelt songs in its catalogue, and  BIS has recorded some of his orchestral works, conducted by Jaakko Kuusisto, who conducts this new recording with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, who made the seminal recording of Järnefelt's music in 1996, which includes two sections from The Song of the Scarlet Flower.  The score used here is reconstructed from what remains of Järnefelt's original score, discovered in 1988, augmented by Jaakko Kuusisto and Jani Kyllönen.
Järnefelt's experience as a conductor of opera gave him insight into the role of music in drama, but writing for film is very different from writing music as music.  "I had to build it up metre by metre, bit by bit" he said, "I received a list of the principaql scenes of the film and their durations, but that information proved to be quite wrong, as the film was screened at a much faster pace,and I was horrified to discover how poorly music and image went together.  I was obliged to shorten the score. Never in my life had I had to write music in such a way that I was forced to conform to the tempo of events - I, who am used to setting the tempo myself.  In the end, it all worked out". The film has been restored and was screened in 2017 but is not yet on DVD.

Based on a novel by Johannes Linnankoski, Song of the Scarlet Flower follows the adventures of a young man, Olof, a rebel  who joins a band of loggers, travelling the river from forests to mills.  He chases women, ruining one who becomes a prostitute in the city , but mends his ways and marries well.  The screenplay is set out in seven acts, as was common at the time. The first section "The First Flush of Spring" suggests youth and promise.  Expansive themes (shimmering strings) alternate with lively woodwinds. A vigorous leitmotiv emerges: possibly the young man heading into the world, folkloric references (violin imitating fiddle) evoking the countryside.  In "The Mother's Glance" a jolly mood gives way to a plaintive song for solo violin,  darker notes introduced by woodwinds, over repetitive angular rhythms.  The leitmotiv introduces "Learning Life", develops into cheeky dance and returns again with even more force.  This chapter apparently illlustrates a scene where   Oluf shoots the rapids. The central movement "A Young Man's Daring-do" is brief, but pensive, violin and woodwinds in duet.

With "Kyllikki" folkloric charm meets the "Olof" leitmotiv. Olof and Kyllikki want to marry but her father objects. Thus the brisk conclusion, with outbursts of timpani, the violins reiterating the leitmotif.  "In The Town" is a nocturne, pizzicato suggesting the ticking of a clock.  He's still chasing women as the waltz reference suggests.  But Olof meets his past, in the person of Gazelle, whom he seduced and abandoned. A chill descends. The pizzicato becomes so quiet that it feels haunted.  Suddenly the orchestra bursts forth - angular, discordant figures suggest Olof's horror and guilt.  Rumbling figures suggest Gazelle's suicide. When the Olof motif returns, it's quieter, chastened.  "The Pilgrimage" is introduced by high-pitched winds suggesting horn calls, and a hymn theme (chamber organ) suggests the churchyard where Olof's parents lie dead.   The hymn expands into a serene but affirmative section which may represent values Olof lost when he ran away.  It now shows him a way forward.  Bells ring out !  Having inherited his parents' wealth, Olof claims Kyllikki, and they marry.

Plenty more on this site about early film and music in film. Please explore and also see :
Victor Sjöström's Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage)
Rasmus Breistein's Brudeferden  i Hardanger,  (Bride oif Hardanger)
Carl Th Dreyer Vampyr
Feminist Finnish Jenůfa, Anna-Liisa 1922
and of course German, French, Chinese and other early film and experimental movies. Plus composers like Hanns Eisler

Aelita Queen of Mars 1924 Soviet Sci Fi

Aelita, Queen of Mars, an early Russian Sci Fi film made by Yakov Protazanov (1881-1945) who'd worked in German and French film studios before returning to the Soviet in 1923, the year before Aelita was made.  Aelita thus exemplifies the ideals of the Soviet experiment, where dreams of modernity and progressive change flourished, briefly, before the Stalinist clampdown. Constructivism and Futurism, inspiring Eisenstein, and so many others.  This context matters, for it was the background to Shostakovich's opera The Nose (reviewed here).  The teenage Shostakovich is believed to have played piano at screenings of the film.  Although the plot is loosely based on a story by Tolstoy, Protazanov's film contrasts the reality of Soviet life in his time with a brilliantly exotic fantasy kingdom on Mars. 

Aelita lives in a palace designed in extravagant art deco angles with shards of reflective glass and strange perspectives. She wears a headdress of spikes, vaguely "Japanese", plays a fountain of light as if it were a harp and paints pictures with a shimmering wand. The Kingdom is ruled by The Elders, led by Tuskub, a malevolent-looking dictator, and Gor, a hunk known as the "Guardian of the Tower of Energy".  The soldiers are faceless robots whose movements are stylized and jerky  yet also vaguely reminiscent of the Ballets Russe.  Aelita's maid hops about in a cage-like dress, her movements  mechanical, though her personality is cheeky and vivacious.

Aelita's kingdom is so technologically advanced that it can send out radio messages to Earth.  At 6.27 CET time on 4th December 1921, a transmission is broadcast: "Anta Udeli Uta". No-one understand, except Engineer Los in Russia, who dreams of space travel and has drawn up plans for a trip to Mars. Los's best friend is Spiridnov, a wild-eyed intellectual, even more of a dreamer than Los. Significantly, Los and Spiridnov are played by the same actor. Los is newly married to Natasha, who is down to earth in every way. She is pursued by Erlich, a black marketeer who takes her to illegal speakeasys where people dance and drink as if the Old Days of  Tsardom had never faded.  She rejects him, but Los does not understand and goes away on a long business trip.  While Los is away, Spiridnov hides Los' spaceship plans in a hole behind a fireplace.When Los comes back from his trip, he thinks Natasha has been unfaithful and shoots her. As she lies in her coffin, Spiridnov appears.  Where's Los ? Los is building his space ship to escape, helped by Gussov, a cheerful Soviet soldier.  They have a stowaway, Kratsov, an inept bounty hunter who wants to arrest Los for murder and/or black marketeering, another sign that Los and Spiridnov might be two sides of a whole.

Aelita, meanwhile, has been watching Earth on Martian TV and sees Los and Natasha kiss. She's fascinated and rejects Gor, her suitor.  It's interesting that Aelita, although played by a female actress, is decidedly androgynous, her heavy makeup more masculine than feminine.  She's also unnaturally  flat chested, so perhaps there are other levels in this film the censors might have missed.  When Los and Gussov arrive on Mars, Aelita wants Los, though he's still in love with Natasha.  Gussov fools around with Aelita's cute maid, though he has a wife back in Russia.  The maid gets sent down to the dungeons for consorting with foreigners.  Gussov follows to save her, and rouses the prisoners to revolt.  "Freedom of speech put an end to thousands of years of slavery on Mars".  "It used to be like this in our country" cries Gussov. "October 25th, 1917" flashes  a subtitle Men are seen breaking their chains, beating weapons into sickles, placing sickles over hammers.  The Martian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" is declared.  Fabulous battlescene between the soldier robots and the Proletariats, who have boxes for heads.  The Elders are routed. Aelita  says that she'll now rule, alone. "I don't buy that" says Los, "Queens can't run revolutions". Sure enough, she orders the army to shoot the mutineers.  Los pushes her off the steps and "she" turns into Natasha. Suddenly Los wakes up. The words "Anta Uteli Uta" ring in his mind. Then we see a workman pasting a poster for a brand of tyres with that slogan.  Suddenly Los is back on earth with Natasha, who's very much alive. He runs to the fireplace, snatches up his plans for space travel and throws them into the fire "That's enough for dreams!" he says "We have other things to worry about".

Brudeferden i Hardanger Fiddles and film

Tomorrow at the Aldeburgh Music Festival is Hardanger Fiddle Day. Julian Anderson's Ring Dance for two violins (1987) will be heard at the Jubilee Hall, together with pieces played by Hardanger fiddle master Sivert Holmen.  The Hardanger tradition comes from the mountains of western Norway.  In rural areas, social occasions like weddings  brought isolated communities together,  thus helped shape regional culture. Hardanger fiddlers played for dances: thus the strong rhythmic beat and repeated patterns.  Hardanger music is joyful, even athletic - some forms of Norwegian dance resemble acrobatics. Yet Hardanger music is also plaintive, with an overlay of keening melancholy. 

That curious blend of youthful vigour and sorrow pervades Brudeferden  i Hardanger, a film from 1926, directed by Rasmus Breistein, who was himself a country fiddler and later learned the Hardanger style. The film is based on at least one novel, but also explicitly connects to one of the most famous paintings in Norwegian art, Brudeferd i Hardanger, (1848) by Tidemand and Gude. The painting shows a boat sailing down a fjord, surrounded by mountains. On the boat is a bride leaving home for a supposedly happy future.  In the film, there's a shot in the film which almost exactly replicates the painting.  Presumably those who watched the movie made the connection.

Breistein's film, though, starts out first with another scene in which a boat carries a family, forced by poverty to emigrate. Marit refuses to go with her parents, but runs up the mountainside, watching the ship head out to sea. The family look back, grimly, at the mountains, not knowing what will lie ahead. Marit stays because she's secretly in love with Anders. Anders is leaving, too, but gives Marit his mother's Sølje, a traditional wedding brooch.  She assumes he'll marry her but four years pass without a word.

Next we see a bridal procession, the Brudeferd. The soundtrack, added when the film was restored, features Hardanger fiddle played by a named master, though otherwise the music is mostly Grieg.  It's a big wedding, with at least a dozen boats, being rowed down the fjord, fancier than in the painting. The bride is rich, wearing a jewelled crown, and elaborate traditional dress. Wonderful shots of the wedding party, with  the women in starched aprons and headresses.  Hardanger embroidery ? Hardanger fiddlers, of course. But who is the bridegroom ? Marit gets Anders alone and scolds him for marrying money.  Marit quits her job in the house of the judge and goes to work with a crofter in the mountains.  Loyal Tore, who has loved her all along, finds her and takes her back to Skjralte, his big farm in the valley.

Many years pass, and Marit is now a rich old widow. Look at her embroidered finery now !  She's still wearing Anders's mother's Sølje. But she's bitter, her mouth hard, like a scar.  Anders has fallen on hard times. His wife's money is gone, and the once rich bride is forced to peddle small goods to scrape a living.  Cruel Marit humiliates the woman, who eventually dies.  Fate, though, intervenes. Marit's daughter Eli falls in love with Anders's son Bérd. When her mother throws her out, she goes to live with him and old Anders in a humble hut. Another country dance, another Hardanger fiddler. Marit's son Vigleik gets drunk, goes to Anders's hovel and beats the old man up. Eli takes Anders back to Skjralte to recover, Vigliek flees to America, and Marit nurses Anders back to health.

The film is beautifully shot, lingering lovingly on things like spinning wheels, bucket making, rustic houses furnished sparsely, some with simple painting on on the walls. and the laying of hay to dry on branches set in the ground.  The acting is good, too, much better than in most silent film.  The restoration is so good that  details are given in full at the end, deservedly so.  Brudeferden i Hardanger is an even more beautifully made film than Troll-Elgen  (which I wrote about here) though Marit is an unsympathetic piece of work.  In the photo below, we can see the simple, portable cameras Breistein's crew used, shooting on location in the open countryside.

Vulture Wally

Die Geier-Wally, or "Vulture Wally", the novel from 1875 by  by Wilhelmine von Hillern (1836-1916). It's  best known to many from the opera La Wally (1892) by Alfredo Catalani. I've been watching the film version, made in 1921, a smash hit in the post-1918 era. Perhaps it was popular because it portrays a woman who can't be tamed -- a free spirit whom the inhibitions of society cannot restrain.  Wally represents the "New Woman" of the modern world. The photo at right comes from the frontispiece of the 1921 reprint of the novel.  

Die Geier-Wally is not a true Bergfilm like Arnold Fanck's Die heilige Berg, made only 5 years later, technologically and artistically a far greater work of art, but it's interesting and apparently much closer to the novel than to the opera. Walburga Stromminger was a fearless teenager, a tomboy as tough as a mountain goat. The villagers on the alpine valley don't like a vulture, which might presumably attack their herds. Wally  volunteers to go get it. She's lowered down a steep cliff by rope and beats off the giant bird (2 metre wing span) with a dagger. The vulture fights back because it's guarding its nest, so perhaps it wasn't an evil spirit. Anyway, from thence Walburga is known as Geier-Wally, or Das Geier-Mädchen, the Vulture Maiden. In the film, she's next seen making her First Communion in a pretty dress, with a fancy cake and flowers ,  conventional feminine conformity. But then she climbs a tree, most unladylike. She also falls hopelessly in love with Bären-Joseph, who's killed a big bear that was supposedly a danger to the community. Wally's father, the Höchstbauer, is the richest man in town and wants Wally to marry Vincenz Gellner. Wally, who can chop wood better than a man, accidentally knocks Gellner out, and is thrown out of the house by her father. She 's also mad at Joseph who seems attracted to an outsider, Afra, so she storms off to live alone in the mountains, like a Berggeisr or mountain spirit of legend. Only when she's driven by desperation does she seek the company of humans.

When Old Stromminger dies, Wally returns as lady of the Höchstbauer manor. She's dressed in fancy velvets but has no illusions about the people around her, who once were so happy to condemn her. A bull runs amok and Joseph is gored trying to tame it. A village celebration is held. In front of everyone Joseph dares Wally to resist a kiss. The pair stalk each other until Wally collapses.  It's a cruel prank, for which Wally wants revenge. Gellner chases Joseph into the hills, where he falls into a ravine. Guilt-stricken Wally descends into the abyss and saves him. Afra, it turns out, is his sister. Wally and Josph embrace, lovers at last. Consider the psycho-sexual and violent undertones  and the element of class war ! The Romantiker wasn't "romantic".  Wilhelmine von Hillern must have been an interesting person, though she lived an ostensibly upper middle class existence.

What's also interesting about this film which was made by Gloria-Filme Catalani in Berlin, is that Henny Porten, who plays Wally, was also,part of the production team. Unlike the director Ewald André Dupont and designer Paul Leni, who both ended up in Hollywood, Porten remained in Germany, making movies for UFA to protect her Jewish husband. Both survived the Third Reich. Leni's designs add a lot to the film, for he chooses dizzyingly Expressionist angles to accentuate the steepness of the mountains, and the predicament Wally faces. Although the interior scenes are detailed to the point of claustrophobia, the mountain scenes look "modern" in that Leni sets up shots of white snow background with jagged trees and rocks - virtues of B&W, which colour can't quite emulate.

Chaliapin Ivan the Terrible rare screening

Feodor Chaliapin, the legendary bass in a silent movie? That's no contradiction in terms, because Chaliapin is a brilliant actor in the grand manner, even when he doesn't sing. The film "Ivan the Tterrible (1915) receives a rare screening on 30 January at the Pushkin House in Bloomsbury Square, London. The restored version was originally seen in Moscow in 2001, but this version has new English subtitles, specially created by film and music historian Paul Fryer.

The film is well worth seeing because it's the closest we can get to early opera performance practice. Obviously, no sound. Nor is it a "filmed opera" like the DVDs we get today. Instead, it's an attempt to reproduce on silent film something of the operatic experience. The title "Ivan the Terrible" is a bit of a misnomer, since the film was based on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov. "Ivan the Terrible" is better box office. Besides Ivan was one of Chaliapin's signature roles: his presence was the draw. Indeed, the idea for the film came from his supporters, who understood how the power of cinema could preserve performance and bring opera to new audiences.  Nowadays it is fashionable to sneer at "crossover" musicians, but until only very recently, many crossed genre. There's lots on this site on Richard Tauber's adventures in cinema, and on music for film by serious composers like Hans Eisler.

Ivan the Terrible folows the plot of The Maid of Pskov so faithfully that it can be watched withoiut sound or subtitles, as long as you're familiar with the opera. Princess Olga of Pskov is in her garden, hearing lurid tales of Ivan's destruction of Novgorod.  The staging is very art nouveau, sculpted lines with a "river" of shining white light in the background. It looks as if it's painted backdrop. Scenes are shot on diagonal horizons, to create a contrast of dark and light. Even the scenes shot in the open air are stylized rather than naturalistic. The acting is similar, designed perhaps to semaphore meaning to audiences up in the galleries of a theatre. In silent film, actors also need to ham because the medium was so restricted.  Cinematographers hadn't quite mastered verité or the art of close-up.

Chaliapin  really had presence. In still photos, we don't realize just how tall he was and how he must have dominated the stage. Later, Chaliapin appears in a coat of armour with a peaked helmet which makes him look like a giant. He beats up Matuta who has captured Olga, and takes her with him to his camp. He has a secret.  He won't hurt Olga. though he rages theatrically on his throne. The battle is a nice crowd scene, shot economically on the same small set/area by the "river" from different angles. In the confusion, Olga is killed. Her lover, Tucha, a stock Romantic hero in breeches, falls over her body weeping, then scrambles down tyhe same steep slope most of the other characters have slid down before him, and drowns in the river. Chaliapin, maddened by grief, wanders down a diagonal path, and wails over a locket, revealing that he was the lover of Olga's mother, and is her father.  Ivan's not terrible, at all.

Please see here for a complete download and review of Chaliapin in the 1933 film Don Quixote with music by Jacques Ibert and Maurice Ravel. Chalapin sings in that, gloriously parodying his stage persona. If I have time I'll write about Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the terrible, with music by Sergei Prokofiev. In the meantime, a full download of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, another Eisenstein movie, from 1937.