Binary opposition "power/people" in S. Eisenstein's historical and biographical cinematography
This article is devoted to the study of the binary opposition «power/people» in Soviet historical and biographical films. The research material is S. Eisenstein’s iconic films Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944). Having analyzed the development and transformation of the binary opposition «power/people» in Eisenstein's historical and biographical films in terms of plot, character system and composition, the author came to the following conclusions: characters of formal authority are often negatively marked. The image of the people is represented by an indivisible monolith. The binary opposition «power/people» is removed by the introduction of a mediator, the character which becomes a key one in films. In the film Alexander Nevsky, the image of the cultural hero, the title character, removes the conflict between the opposing sides: the image of the prince is opposed to the image of the official power and absorbs the features of the people's ruler. The image of the people, when interacting with the image of a cultural hero, becomes an ambivalent carrier of both power and heroic traits. In the film Ivan the Terrible, the development of the medial image of the tsar leads to the fact that he himself becomes the embodiment of absolute power, occupying the «powerful» side of the opposition. Thus, the binary opposition is replaced by the ambivalence of the ruler. The author concludes that the development of the opposition «power/people» in the historical and biographical cinema of the Stalinist time is representative of its period and demonstrates strengthening of the imperial discourse of Soviet ideology and the role of the ruler's personality.