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THE EUROPEAN CINEMA
even start a profusion of projects (Moscow, La Condition Humaine, Bezhin Meadow). Scenarios were prepared and footage shot for some of these, but none reached completion until the appearance of Alexander Nevsky at the end of 1938. What was happening in these years is difficult to assess. In 1935, he was severely reprimanded by the Central Committee as a formalist, and ' banished ' for a long holiday. But between times he was by no means idle. He taught at the Higher State Institute of Cinema in Moscow, acted as artistic supervisor for Mosfilm, wrote innumerable theoretical articles, but none of this activity had issue in a personal film. So much of his writing at this period is speculation on the essential nature of the film, and of all art,1 that our first conclusion might be that he had entirely retired from the controversy over propagandist ends and means which the 1935 conference had highlighted. But Rotha significantly points out : ' From the text of his G.I.K. lectures I should say that he understood the problem only too well, but was experiencing the greatest difficulty in doing anything about it but theorise.' 2 At any rate, the events of 1936 relieved him of the problem by providing a new channel for action which was completely noncontroversial. It is generally conceded that, after the Moscow trials and the succeeding purge, all the energies of the Soviet Union were poured into preparation for the war that was now seen to be inevitable. Consequently Eisenstein, and with him the entire Soviet cinema, could by-pass with a clear conscience the basic and still unanswered problem of creating Soviet dramatic documentary and concentrate on films designed to rouse the fatherland spirit. Alexander Nevsky was exactly that. Acted and directed in the heroic manner, if not, indeed, operatically (two years later Eisenstein returned to the stage to direct Die Walkiire), it was in style and approach as far removed from the Eisenstein of Potemkin and Ten
1 It has been collected and translated by Jay Leyda as The Film Sense (Faber & Faber, 1943).
2 Op. tit, p. 178.
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