Began his film career as an assistant to Sergei Eisenstein, with whom he co-directed both "October" (1928) and "The General Line" (1929). Alexandrov then accompanied the master on his trip to the West, directing the experimental short "Romance sentimentale" in Paris in 1930. (Production funds were raised on the strength of Eisenstein being a co-director, though the film is really the work of Alexandrov and cinematographer Eduard Tisse.) From France the group moved first to the US (where Eisenstein's plans to film Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" fell through) and then central America, where Eisenstein shot the bulk of his subsequently abandoned Mexican project (the film was edited and completed by Alexandrov in 1979 and released as "Que Viva Mexico").
Back in the USSR, Alexandrov made a name for himself as a director of effervescent musical comedies, notably "The Joyous Fellows" (1933), which stand out from the social realist works produced by his contemporaries. After succeeding Eisenstein as artistic director of Mosfilm in 1944, Alexandrov turned more to the Stalinist line. He continued to gain acclaim abroad with "Meeting on the Elbe" (1949) and "Glinka" (1952), both starring his wife Lyubov (Luba) Orlova.