Sergei Eisenstein's "Strike," with Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," mark the most outstanding cinematic debuts in the history of film. Triggered by the suicide of a worker unjustly accused of theft, a strike is called by the laborers of a Moscow factory. The managers, owner and the Czarist government dispatch infiltrators in an attempt to break the workers unity. Unsuccessful, they hire the police and, in the film's most harrowing and powerful sequences, the unarmed strikers are slaughtered in a brutal confrontation. This edition of "Strike" is digitally remastered from a mint-condition 35mm print made from the original camera negative and features new digital stereo music composed and performed by the Alloy Orchestra.
The film itself is a classic of filmmaking, showing the early concepts and developments of how to dramatize an idea. The content of the movie comes froms a soviet ideal, the exaltation of the factory worker, but this is not Eisenstein's most important feature, but instead the technique in which it is done. The beggining is stunning and simple, showing a puddle that reflects a worker and a factory behind him, big chimeneys of smoke, and showing that scenario by not looking directly to it, but by a mirror, is something to admire.
I am to become a film student, so I bought this film in this remastered edition so I can watch it as best as possible. And mainly to learn from it.
It is worth it, and amazon always delivers. I live in Uruguay, far, far away from the US, and the shipment always arrives safely.
June 12, 2008Of all the Eisenstein films I've seen, which to date includes all but the "Ivan" series, "Strike" is easily the weakest. He attempts far too much in order to be eclectic and achieves far too little in the process. But it was his first movie, and it does feature some good examples of montage (which would be perfected with "October", a truly great work); it's just the humor that really kills the movie for me. If it hadn't been for his attempts at being amusing, and had he toned down a bit of the symbolism, "Strike" would rate much higher. As it is, it's a historically important, pompous bore. Image does have a nice dvd though.
April 8, 2008I agree with everyone who has seen this version of "Strike" Striking! Would there were a version of "Potemkin" as clear, cranked properly and with Meisel's score intact with the film.
March 10, 2006 |  | The auspicious film debut of director Sergei M. Eisenstein |  |
If the quick and easy label is to call Sergei Eisenstein the Orson Welles of Soviet cinema, chronology notwithstanding, then "Strike" ("Stachka") is the great director's "Citizen Kane." This comparison would be dictated not by the greatness of this 1924 silent film, but rather by the fact "Strike" was Eisenstein's debut film. What the young Eisenstein clearly has in common with the young Welles is the reckless creativity of a kid with a brand new toy. The story is about the strike of factory workers in Czarist Russia in 1912, which ends with the rebellious comrades being brutally beaten down.
Eisenstein might be consumed with exploring the boundaries of cinematic technique, but he does evince some basic storytelling skills here. The climatic tragedy is set up initial comic element, which gain our sympathy for the workers on a human rather than an ideological level. Certainly a management that brings in spies and agents to infiltrate the oppressed workers cannot be supported. The strike begins after a factory worker, falsely accused of being a thief, hangs himself. The initial excitement over the prospects of success faded as the strike goes on and on. When the provocateurs hired by management finally bring things to a head, the tired and hungry workers are no match for the military troops that come to crush them. "Strike" features Grigori Aleksandrov as the Factory Foreman, Aleksandr Antonov as a Member of Strike Committee, Yudif Glizer as the Queen of Thieves, and I. Ivanov as the Chief of Police.
The more you know about Eisenstein's later works, the more you will recognize the raw cinematic techniques he displays in his first film as being refined in his later masterpieces. I know the obvious comparison is to look at "Battleship Potemkin" after screening "Strike," but I think the most profitable analog is with Alexander Dovzhenko's 1929 "Arsenal," which deals with a similar subject, namely a 1918 strike by Bolshevik works in Kiev. "Strike" runs 75 minutes and this Kino on Video edition has been digitally mastered from a mint 35mm print taken from the original negative. The presentation of this silent film is enhanced by a new score by the Alloy Orchestra. September 3, 2002
 | | Fascinating example of the early work of a master film-maker | |
The most noticeable thing about this film is the extremely fast editing. This is fast compared with modern films, but by its contemporaries, it's lightning fast. Eisenstein advocated what he called 'montage', meaning more the juxtaposition of two different or similar images by intercutting or fading between the two to allow the viewer to draw comparisons between the two images. This is sometimes subtle, and at other times blunt (such as the scene with the crowd being slaughtered being intercut with cattle being slaughtered). Nevertheless it allows Eisenstein to make a point that we are treating humans as cattle and also avoids visceral depiction of the killing of the humans, whilst giving us a shocking image that tells us what we need to know. The film is somewhat difficult to follow, even with subtitles, and I felt there were no real points of identification. The humour in the depiction of the Bourgeoisie lightened the tone in places, but the film still seems more like a political manifesto for the Bolsheviks than representation of reality. Years ahead of its time technically, but dated in content.
October 31, 2001More reviews at Amazon.com ...
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