Costume as a semiotic and ideological text of a historical era in Eisenstein's artistic interpretation of the film "Alexander Nevsky"

The purpose of the study is to analyze the specific features of the artistic interpretation of historical costumes in Sergei Eisenstein's film "Alexander Nevsky." The methods of mythologization and stylization employed in the development of costumes for both the positive (Russian warriors) and negative (Teutonic knights) characters are analyzed. Aspects of how the filmmakers abandoned precise archaeological verisimilitude in favor of expressive symbolic images rooted in both medieval art and 1930s culture are explored. The research's novelty lies in its art historical analysis of costume in the film not as an auxiliary cinematic element, but as a semiotic and ideological text of the historical era, integrating motifs from Russian fresco painting, iconography, and European Gothic art to create a symbolic narrative. The study uncovered and systematized the artistic techniques the director employed in his costume designs: juxtaposition (silhouette, texture, ornament), grotesque, and methods of glorifying protagonists and dehumanizing antagonists. The analysis suggests that the costumes in the film are not precise historical reconstructions, but rather independent artistic images.