"Alexander Nevsky" is in many ways a strange, absorbing picture, but as Russian propaganda its effect is-mainly comical. It goes back to the Thirteenth Century, when Russia was menaced by a medieval German army, and concerns the over-whelming victory of the Russians under their hero, Nevsky. Though the tale is told as simply and as powerfully as an epic, there is much there to disgust and annoy American audiences. The extravagant hero-worship will only increase our lack of understanding of the Russian mind, while little can be found to excuse the vengeful care with which the camera follows the last efforts of the defeated soldiers drowning in an ice flow.

Though enough brutality is shown on both sides, war appears as a zestful game, in which the bravest gets the girl as well as all other earthly honors. But fortunately, there is no attempt at sophistication, and if one allows for the propaganda and the insensivity, the film may come as a breath of fresh air after the emptiness (and often equally insidious propaganda) of Hollywood. The strange and fearsome animal heraldry of the Germans produces something quite different from another patriotic, medieval picture, "Henry V." "Nevsky" never achieves the effect of magnificence of the English movie, and its battle scene is weak in comparison, but the picture of a cruel and unnatural enemy instead of a weak and contemptible one creates the same shivers that a child has, reading really seary story book.

The easiest way out of understanding "Nevsky" is to laugh at it and it is true that some very funny cracks go around the Old South when the crowd there is small. However, a somewhat new experience can be had by giving oneself up to the movie's naive strength. Nevsky is a superhuman hero, completely shove the bourgeois jealousies and physical frailties of mere man, and so is, and should be, repugnant to American audiences. Consequently, the picture cannot be taken seriously or realistically, but as a work of art it is simple, strong, and beautifully organized.