Interesting point. But no, I would not call the MUSIC of "Alexander Nevsky" kitsch (or schlock either). Music is music, and rises above whatever ideology may have inspired it in the first place. After all, atheists can listen to Mozart's Requiem with pleasure..
As for the film, it IS propaganda, but I am not sure we can say it was simply "created on order from the government." First of all, Eisenstein, active in the 20s in the "proletcult" movement, had always been a willing "propagandist" for the Soviet regime, and saw no contradiction between his role as a propagandist and his vocation as an artist. And although I am no expert on Eisenstein, I have read that doing a film on Nevsky was his own idea, and that he had a lot of headaches with the censorship when he was working on it. Eisenstein was a Jew, after all, and had every reason to fear a German invasion. Of course, the film came out at just the right time, and won him not only prizes but also security from arrest. (Needless to say, that did not prevent the film from being banned after the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed.)
Whatever the true story behind the film is, just how do you characterize a work that is technically so brilliant, but so feeble in terms of content? Is "kitsch" really the word we want? And should we make any allowances for an artist who had only recently been denounced for "formalism", and who, if not for Nevsky, might have disappeared down the maw of the Great Purge?
Joan |
