Highly Recommended
Strike was the first film of one of the early masters of cinema, Sergei Eisenstein, of the Russian formalist school. This film as a debut is as important as Citizen Kain by Welles, both featuring novel directorial methods. This film captures the soul in the world of pre-dictatorship Russia, portraying it in utmost experimentation with inter-cutting, expanded time sequences, editing and most especially, his montage techniques.
The story itself is basic in plot, yet of great magnitude in theme: the exploitation of hard workers by the lazy cigar-smoking bourgeoisie. The story is set in a pre-dictatorship town where, in a industrial factory, a man is accused of stealing a micrometer. The man, though innocent, is to be fired so he commits suicide out of escape from the stigma of being a thief, leaving a note behind to his fellow comrades declaring his innocence and also some deplorative statements about the ruling class. This sets off a few other incidents which lead to the inevitable slaughter of the workers at the hands of the police.
This film, though not tied together in as much unity as Battleship Potemkin(1925), with it's consistency of technique, purpose and vision, still shows unique signs of an original director and thinker of cinema, who was not concerned about the straight material that the camera received, but how it changes through a formulation process into parallel images, hieroglyphic symbols and conceptions themselves. Though living in the USSR and his themes being 'communist', or agitprop in nature, his techniques often surpass his material and make for necessary viewing to anyone who is a film buff, directorial hope-to-be-er, Russian historian or, activist.
A superb piece of theme depiction, directorial work, agitprop and art in general.
Strike was the first film of one of the early masters of cinema, Sergei Eisenstein, of the Russian formalist school. This film as a debut is as important as Citizen Kain by Welles, both featuring novel directorial methods. This film captures the soul in the world of pre-dictatorship Russia, portraying it in utmost experimentation with inter-cutting, expanded time sequences, editing and most especially, his montage techniques.
The story itself is basic in plot, yet of great magnitude in theme: the exploitation of hard workers by the lazy cigar-smoking bourgeoisie. The story is set in a pre-dictatorship town where, in a industrial factory, a man is accused of stealing a micrometer. The man, though innocent, is to be fired so he commits suicide out of escape from the stigma of being a thief, leaving a note behind to his fellow comrades declaring his innocence and also some deplorative statements about the ruling class. This sets off a few other incidents which lead to the inevitable slaughter of the workers at the hands of the police.
This film, though not tied together in as much unity as Battleship Potemkin(1925), with it's consistency of technique, purpose and vision, still shows unique signs of an original director and thinker of cinema, who was not concerned about the straight material that the camera received, but how it changes through a formulation process into parallel images, hieroglyphic symbols and conceptions themselves. Though living in the USSR and his themes being 'communist', or agitprop in nature, his techniques often surpass his material and make for necessary viewing to anyone who is a film buff, directorial hope-to-be-er, Russian historian or, activist.
A superb piece of theme depiction, directorial work, agitprop and art in general.