Strike (1925)

A group of oppressed factory workers go on strike in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Director:

Sergei M. Eisenstein

Writers:

Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein

Stars:

Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Maksim Shtraukh, Mikhail Gomorov

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Maksim Shtraukh	...	Police Spy
Grigoriy Aleksandrov	...	Factory Foreman
Mikhail Gomorov	...	Worker
I. Ivanov	...	Chief of Police
Ivan Klyukvin	...	Revolutionary
Aleksandr Antonov	...	Member of Strike Committee
Yudif Glizer	...	Queen of Thieves
Anatoliy Kuznetsov
Vera Yanukova
Vladimir Uralskiy	...	(as V. Uralsky)
M. Mamin
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Boris Yurtsev	...	King of Thieves

Storyline

In Russia's factory region during Czarist rule, there's restlessness and strike planning among workers; management brings in spies and external agents. When a worker hangs himself after being falsely accused of thievery, the workers strike. At first, there's excitement in workers' households and in public places as they develop their demands communally. Then, as the strike drags on and management rejects demands, hunger mounts, as does domestic and civic distress. Provocateurs recruited from the lumpen and in league with the police and the fire department bring problems to the workers; the spies do their dirty work; and, the military arrives to liquidate strikers.

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Plot Keywords:

strike | factory | spy | working | police | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Soviet Union

Release Date:

1961 (USA)

Also Known As:

La grève

Company Credits

Production Co:

Goskino, Proletkult

Technical Specs

Runtime:

82 min 94 min (DVD special edition)

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

First feature film directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein.

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Goofs

The story is set in 1903. Throughout the film automobiles from the 1920s appear on streets. One is the 1920s auto that the worker (who stole the administrators' posted reply to workers' demands) tried to use to escape police goons during a nighttime rainstorm; when upper class women appear, they are wearing contemporary 1920s fashions, and the popular music that's on the sound track is also from the 1920s.

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Quotes

Opening Title Card: The strength of the working class is in its organization. Without the organization of the masses, the proletariat is nothing. An organized proletariat is everything. Good organization means unity of action, the unity of practical activity. Lenin, 1907

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Connections

Featured in Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography (1996)

User Reviews

Light years Ahead

The first thing you notice about Eisenstein's Strike is its modern feel. Even a simple glance will reveal hundreds of images and techniques that are still being used today; notice how the introduction of characters like The Owl and The Fox mirror similar introductions in films like Ocean's Eleven or even Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Notice the amazing photography that constantly adds an undercurrent of dark humour to the narrative, notice also the unsentimental editing that creates dialectical meaning from juxtaposition of disturbing images - a slaughtered cow, the vanquished strikers, a dead baby, the greed of the bourgeoisie.

Battleship Potempkin was popular with the Stalinist regime because its lack of formalism, there was little in it to fool a dim witted censor. Itserved a purpose first, an aesthetic ideal second - the same can not be said for Strike that is as visually exciting as it is politically interesting. At times it resembles Lang and the German Expressionists with its moving sculptures of factories and machinery and at others it resembles Eisenstein at his realist best. Think of the Odessa steps directed by Murnau and you get somewhere near the idea.

Strike is a black film that is made blacker by comic scenes of the harshness of pre-Revolutionary Russian life and there are dancing bears too!