Sometimes, I wonder if I've watched the same movie as some of my fellow reviewers. I guess it all comes down to personal taste, but I'm sure there's a certain kind of snobbery involved in appreciation of movies like this; a feeling that praise must be heaped upon it because it is an acknowledged classic', from an acknowledged master' of the medium. Hey, if it's been lavished since its release with fulsome praise by a raft of highbrow critics it has to be good, right? So those endless lingering shots of actors sneering at one another like pantomime witches, or maintaining frozen expressions while casting long sidelong glances at one another aren't evidence of a director employing the outdated techniques of a form of cinema that died a decade-and-a-half before? No, no, no it's a form of stylised expressionism, the unique and brilliant technique of a deep and thoughtful artist. The actors all speak their lines as if they are making speeches? The director was making superb use of the talent at his disposal, elevating performances above the commonly accepted standard of acting in Russia at the time.
Yeah, right. Let's call a spade a spade shall we, people? This movie is a badly dated, badly acted, leaden-plotted chore to watch, with poorly identified characters and a fatal weakness in the form of Nikolai Cherkasov in the title role (just watch the death' scene to see what I mean even by this movie's standard his acting in that scene is awful). The only good things about this movie are Prokofiev's superlative score, some occasionally impressive imagery, and the highly-accomplished cinematography Eisenstein's use of light and shadow is superb.
Nevertheless, if this movie had been made by a lesser director it would have quite rightly been forgotten by now.
