Alexander Nevsky 1938 - The most influential Soviet historical film

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029850/
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein, Dmitri Vasilyev
Main Cast: Nikolai Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov

"Like many of Eisenstein's best films, Alexander Nevsky was conceived as a morale-booster, aimed at stirring up Russian patriotism. It is set in the 13th century, but the villainous Teutonic Knights are obviously meant to represent the burgeoning threat of Hitler's hordes. With Russia besieged by both these knights and by the Tartars, only a charismatic leader can save the populace from these barbaric baby killers (yes, we see the villains tossing screaming infants into bonfires!) The hero of the piece is the legendary Prince Alexander Nevsky, portrayed by Nikolai Cherkasov, who bears a striking resemblance to Gary Cooper. The saving turnaround for Nevsky is the battle of ice-covered Lake Peipus in 1242. This bravura sequence is staged in spectacular fashion, underlined by the specially-commissioned music of Sergei Prokofiev.
Alexander Nevsky was spawned by world events, kept out of circulation due to changing political winds, and then enshrined as perhaps the most influential Soviet-made historical film; and it was also popular around the world, named one of the best films of the year by the very conservative National Board of Review, among others. Then Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939, and the movie was withdrawn from circulation, no longer of use to the Soviet government. With the breakdown of the 'peace' between the two nations in 1941, Alexander Nevsky was rushed back into release in the Soviet Union, where it proved even more effective the second time around. It had by that time already influenced the work of filmmakers far from the Soviet Union: it was clearly the motivation for the depiction of England's defeat of the Spanish Armada in Alexander Korda's The Lion Has Wings (1940), the first British propaganda film of the war, started the day after Hitler invaded Poland; and Laurence Olivier modeled most of the Battle of Agincourt in his Henry V (1944) after the battle scenes in Alexander Nevsky, virtually recreating entire shots in what proved the first successful film of a Shakespeare play." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/alexander-nevsky-v1438

DVD links:

Ninjo kami fusen (Humanity and paper balloons) 1937 - A pre-war Japanese milestone

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029314/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Sadao Yamanaka
Main Cast: Chojuro Kawarasaki, Kan'emon Nakamura, Tsuruzo Nakamura

"Humanity and Paper Balloons (based on a Kabuki play known as Shinza the Barber), unlike most other Japanese films of this period, is a historical film with a critical edge. Refusing to glorify samurai, the film instead deflates the myth around them with a gentle humanity. The film opens directly after a penurious ronin samurai has taken his own life. At his funeral his neighbors from his slum mourn his death. Here the film introduces another ronin samurai who lives in equal poverty. Having pawned his sword for food, the samurai searches for work but to no avail. The family's only income comes from the little balloon children's toys made by the wife. Out of desperation, the samurai abets in an attempted kidnapping. After finding out, the wife kills him in his sleep and then takes her own life, closing the film's narrative circle.
Filmed in conjunction with the radical Zenshin-za theatre group, Humanity and Paper Balloons, Sadao Yamanaka's tragi-comic tribute to the poor and working classes in the 18th century during the Edo period is a treasure of world cinema. A contemporary of Ozu, Naruse, and Mizoguchi, Yamanaka made 22 films before his death in Manchuria in 1938 at the age of 29 but sadly only three have survived. Humanity and Paper Balloons is a jidaigeki or historical period film whose power lies not only in the social realist message that depicts the hardships endured by the poor but in its delineation of character, its humor, and the beautiful cinematography that captures the claustrophobic nature of the village in which the story takes place."

Download links:

(DVDrip, mkv, 409 MB, Japanese audio with English subtitle
password: TinyBearDs):

http://www.filefactory.com/file/57hks70fm32p/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/5py4obr20a9/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/547xkj58iarz/