Alexander Nevsky

Eisenstein's 1938 war epic. It contains some arresting images and a beautiful stately manner, if some aspects do strike as frankly bizarre to the modern cinematic sensibility (it is a question we will leave open whether these shortcomings lie in the viewer or in the work itself).
The opening is frankly not promising, we have an odd acting style of archetypes, we have some pretty blatant Stalinist rewriting of doctrine (note the new found emphasis on heroic individuals, nationalism, and history in comparison to 'Potemkin').
The film surges on though, and we start to develop greater interest. The whole thing is photographed beautifully, the steppes, the wide flat lands. Eisenstein has calmed down on the montage (with latermentioned exceptions) and largely portrays this film is a panorama of the land. He has a technique of the wider shot, and then a close up to whoever was the centre of that wider shot, that is often repeated but barely bettered in the elegance of its editing.
The battle scenes are of particular interest. The first one is perhaps the most bizarre we have ever seen, where just as the action is about to take place we cut to the steppes, long duration shots, hearing the action off stage. This is most un-Eisenstein Russian Montage-esque, but is damn interesting and rather effective. Then we have the hugely famous final battle, which is where Eisenstein returns to the montage with baby killing, drowning knights, and all round excitment and beauty in juztaposition.
The arresting images mentioned earlier are of Alexander's wonderful square face, the foreign agent serpent (an obvious political nod, as is the trial), and most obviously of the German knights. The use of white to show their evil, the covering of faces, has been repeated thousands of times across movie history.
A film with layers in its use of the camera and edit that can be picked apart on rewatching, as a first go we found this film, a little stilted and banal narratively as it is, a good watch.