Eisenstein: The Sound Years [3 Discs] [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

The director of some of the most important films in Russian history, Eisenstein: The Sound Years comes to DVD from Criterion Collection and features the classics Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky. Presented in 1.33:1 full frame and featuring audio rendered in Dolby Digital Mono, this disc also offers optional English subtitles. Extra features on Ivan the Terrible include a multimedia essay on the history of Ivan the Terrible by Joan Neuberger, deleted scenes, drawings and production stills and a multimedia essay on Eisenstein's visual vocabulary by Yuri Tsivian. Extra features in Alexander Nevsky include an audio essay by film scholar David Bordwell, a multimedia essay by Russell Merritt, a reconstruction of Eisenstein's unfinished film Bezhin Meadow, drawings and production stills and a restoration demonstration. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 3
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Black and White
• Subtitle: English

AWARDS

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1939

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Sergei Eisenstein

• Producer:

  Sergei Eisenstein

• Screenwriter:

  Sergei Eisenstein, Pyotr Pavlenko

• Cinematographer:

  Eduard K. Tissé, Andrei Moskvin

• Composer (Music Score):

  Sergey Prokofiev

• Production Designer:

  Isaac Shpinel

• Art Director:

  Isaac Shpinel

• Costume Designer:

  Charles Clement, Isaac Shpinel

REVIEWS:

• Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky was spawned by world events, kept out of circulation due to changing political winds, and then enshrined as perhaps the most influential Soviet-made historical film. Made at the behest of the Soviet government to bolster morale, the film re-enacted a 13th century Russian victory over invading Teutonic knights. Intended to remind the Russian people that they'd defeated supposedly superior German invaders before, the movie proved astoundingly effective as anti-Hitler propaganda within the Soviet Union, and it was also popular around the world, named one of the best films of the year by the very conservative National Board of Review, among others. Then Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939, and the movie was withdrawn from circulation, no longer of use to the Soviet government. With the breakdown of the "peace" between the two nations in 1941, Alexander Nevsky was rushed back into release in the Soviet Union, where it proved even more effective the second time around. It had by that time already influenced the work of filmmakers far from the Soviet Union: it was clearly the motivation for the depiction of England's defeat of the Spanish Armada in Alexander Korda's The Lion Has Wings (1940), the first British propaganda film of the war, started the day after Hitler invaded Poland; and Laurence Olivier modeled most of the Battle of Agincourt in his Henry V (1944) after the battle scenes in Alexander Nevsky, virtually recreating entire shots in what proved the first successful film of a Shakespeare play. The movie's ongoing influence extended to the concert hall: composer Sergei Prokofiev wrote a score inspired by the film that he later reshaped into a massive choral/orchestral piece that took on a life of its own in the concert hall, arguably the piece of film music that most successfully made the leap into the orchestral repertory. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• The second film in director Sergei Eisenstein's planned trilogy of the life of Russian czar Ivan the Terrible, Ivan Grozny II was filmed in 1946 (following the first installment), but went unreleased until 1958. The delay was due to Stalin's obvious unhappiness with the resemblance, intentional or not, between Ivan the Terrible's totalitarian ways and his own. Though parts of the third film were shot around the same time, the trilogy would never see completion; Eisenstein died in 1948. In the director's body of work, Ivan Grozny II was perhaps most significant for its two color sequences. For someone who never cared much for technological advances in film sound, Eisenstein did remarkably well incorporating color into his film. Though the sequences may seem thematically random, they fit the movie's tone and are very modern in their use of color to evoke a mood. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi