Sergei M. Eisenstein's first completed sound film is notable for the brilliant formal counterpointing of its visuals with a score composed by Sergei Prokofiev. Their collaboration involved not simply an attempt at realistic synchronization, but a thoroughly worked-out audio-visual structure based on the theories of counterpointal dynamics which Eisenstein developed in relation to sound in the cinema. Filmed on the eve of World War II, this highly stylized film, though set in 1241, has the authority of a contemporary documentary; its forceful portrayal of a nationalistic hero who lives among the fishermen of a peaceful village, courageously confronting machinelike and heavily armoured foreign invaders, points to the imminent danger of an invasion of Russia by Fascist Germany. The Hitler-Stalin pact resulted in the temporary shelving of the film, but its previous release had already helped unify popular resistance against the Nazis.