For his 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein worked so closely with composer Sergei Prokofiev that individual shots in the climactic “battle on the ice” were timed to correspond to the length of musical phrases.

Their collaboration during editing to marry music and imagery set the modern standard for filmmakers; Valery Gergiev, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, called Prokofiev’s score “the best ever composed for the cinema.”