Strike

Eisenstein’s bold first feature is one of cinema’s momentous debuts, heralding the arrival of one of the art form’s most important figures, and embodying, in stirring fashion, the revolutionary ideas that made him so influential: chiefly, that meaning in cinema is created through montage, the juxtaposition of images. Dramatizing a 1912 strike by factory workers and its brutal suppression by the Tsarist authorities, Strike grew out of the director’s work with the radical Proletkult theatre group, and was influenced by the avant-garde methods of Russian Constructivism. Eisenstein conceived the film as an exercise in the “montage of attractions” — a kinetic, dialectic collision of conflicting shots and elements designed to shock and agitate the audience. As such, it serves as a forceful exposition of Eisenstein’s celebrated rejoinder to fellow theorist and filmmaker Dziga Vertov: “I don't believe in the kino-eye, I believe in the kino-fist!” The work also exemplifies Eisenstein's characteristic use of “types”, of the aggregate, collective protagonist rather than the individual hero — part of his efforts to dispense with the traditions of bourgeois cinema and create a truly revolutionary mass art. “The finest of his films ... The images show an inflamed imagination and a director as much obsessed by Freud as by Marx” (David Thomson). B&W, 35mm, silent with musical score and English intertitles. 82 mins.