Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Year: 1925
Run-time: 1 hr 22 min
Source: Kanopy
Here we break chronological order for the first notable time: Strike is actually the first feature-length Eisenstein film, although it was made in the same year as Battleship Potemkin. Potemkin is the better film, although I would say that Strike better illustrates just how ahead of his time Eisenstein was. This is a masterwork of editing - never has a film this early felt so meticulously constructed from its shots. Although light-years apart in story and mood, the film on the list that feels the closest in directorial spirit was Jean Epstein's Coeur Fidele. (I can't help but wonder what Eisenstein's films would be like if he was born in the West, in some scenario like the Superman Red Sun comic but in reverse.)
The shots are incredibly quick, with entire scenes built out of small, disparate moments, like in a comic book. The effect is exhilarating, if more than a bit exhausting. Even more so than Potemkin, this film demands your full attention to follow along, even though the plot is not that complicated. I think there's a reason that what people tend to remember from Eisenstein films are specific images, like the bleeding woman in Potemkin, and the slaughtered cow (representing the oppressed working class) in this film. The pace is so rapid that it can be difficult to get any sort of perspective on the film as a whole, and that's part of the point.
Instead of basing this film on specific events, it tells a generalized story of a pre-revolution factory that goes on strike, only for its shareholders to ignore the workers' demands, band together with the police, and wipe out the workers and their families entirely. It claims to be a collage of events taking in multiple cities, but I don't have the historical background to verify these claims. Suffice it to say this is a film based on extreme stereotypes of the upper class, and in some ways that works in the film's favor.
Although it's predictably a tragedy, I was surprised at the sense of humor that this film has. Neither of these early Eisenstein films have many definite characters (part of the Soviet model is telling stories from a collectivist rather than an individualist perspsective), but this film spends a good deal of time talking about the secret informants that report to the shareholders, each of whom has an animal codename and even behaves like that animal. Eisenstein wants us to laugh at these stereotypes.
If I prefer Battleship Potemkin, it's only because the real events that film was based on are much more compelling, and the tension builds steadily rather than being at the same high energy level throughout. Nevertheless, no earlier film on the list is as avant-garde or as intrinsically interesting as Strike, and I'm grateful to have seen it.
Year: 1925
Run-time: 1 hr 22 min
Source: Kanopy
Here we break chronological order for the first notable time: Strike is actually the first feature-length Eisenstein film, although it was made in the same year as Battleship Potemkin. Potemkin is the better film, although I would say that Strike better illustrates just how ahead of his time Eisenstein was. This is a masterwork of editing - never has a film this early felt so meticulously constructed from its shots. Although light-years apart in story and mood, the film on the list that feels the closest in directorial spirit was Jean Epstein's Coeur Fidele. (I can't help but wonder what Eisenstein's films would be like if he was born in the West, in some scenario like the Superman Red Sun comic but in reverse.)
The shots are incredibly quick, with entire scenes built out of small, disparate moments, like in a comic book. The effect is exhilarating, if more than a bit exhausting. Even more so than Potemkin, this film demands your full attention to follow along, even though the plot is not that complicated. I think there's a reason that what people tend to remember from Eisenstein films are specific images, like the bleeding woman in Potemkin, and the slaughtered cow (representing the oppressed working class) in this film. The pace is so rapid that it can be difficult to get any sort of perspective on the film as a whole, and that's part of the point.
Instead of basing this film on specific events, it tells a generalized story of a pre-revolution factory that goes on strike, only for its shareholders to ignore the workers' demands, band together with the police, and wipe out the workers and their families entirely. It claims to be a collage of events taking in multiple cities, but I don't have the historical background to verify these claims. Suffice it to say this is a film based on extreme stereotypes of the upper class, and in some ways that works in the film's favor.
Although it's predictably a tragedy, I was surprised at the sense of humor that this film has. Neither of these early Eisenstein films have many definite characters (part of the Soviet model is telling stories from a collectivist rather than an individualist perspsective), but this film spends a good deal of time talking about the secret informants that report to the shareholders, each of whom has an animal codename and even behaves like that animal. Eisenstein wants us to laugh at these stereotypes.
If I prefer Battleship Potemkin, it's only because the real events that film was based on are much more compelling, and the tension builds steadily rather than being at the same high energy level throughout. Nevertheless, no earlier film on the list is as avant-garde or as intrinsically interesting as Strike, and I'm grateful to have seen it.
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