Product Details

• Actors: Grigori Aleksandrov, Maksim Shtraukh, Mikhail Gomorov, I. Ivanov, Ivan Klyukvin
• Directors: Sergei M. Eisenstein
• Format: NTSC, Original recording remastered, Silent
• Language: Russian
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: KINO INTERNATIONAL
• DVD Release Date: August 30, 2011
• Run Time: 88 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0053TWWAY
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,348 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Sergei Eisenstein's debut film is more than a landmark of Soviet cinema; it's easily one of the most thrilling and inventive films to emerge from the silent era of Russian filmmaking. Eisenstein was a theater director and stage designer with some very specific ideas about the cinema, and he put them into practice telling the story of a worker's strike in pre-Revolution Russia, portraying the struggle not of leader against leader, but of the proletariat against the factory owners, enlivened by a conspiratorial subplot involving a quartet of insidious spies sent to infiltrate the ranks of labor. The subject matter is at times didactic and the acting often hammy and overwrought, but the technique is vibrant and the images striking. Eisenstein's compositions reflect the graphic boldness of contemporary poster art, mixing poetic realism with grotesque expressionism in a gripping style, and his famous montage editing style (to be perfected in his next film, Potemkin) is raw, experimental, and energetic. Eisenstein's later films are more consistent and elegant, but none of them have the sheer cinematic invention and energy of this first film. The new score composed and performed by the idiosyncratic Alloy Orchestra combines a mix of martial and mood music on synthesizer with the driving percussion of drums, wood blocks, bells, and wrecking yard of clanging metal objects--a dynamic soundtrack to one of the most auspicious directoral debuts ever. --Sean Axmaker

Product Description

Eistenstein's first film deals with a widespread labor strike in a rural factory and is, without doubt, one of the most astonishing debuts in film history. His introduction of dialectical montage--which included then-innovative shock cuts to such violent images as a raised club, a bloody face, and a bull's throat being cut--both disturbed and galvanized contemporary audiences. Combined with the expressionistic compositional style Eisenstein had absorbed from French and German films, it established its director as a new force in world cinema. Commissioned by the government to commemorate the first, failed Bolshevik revolution, the film covers a 1912 strike at a metalworks factory whose workers have been bullied and humiliated by the plant management. When a fired worker commits suicide, the workers organize a peaceful strike. But the plant bosses make use of agents provocateurs and eventually bring in the czar's troops, who crack down on the strikers with maximum brutality. Aside from his editing innovations, Eisenstein pioneered the concept of the collective group as a character, influenced by the example of the newly formed Soviet Union, as well as the Constructivist art of the period. FIRST TIME EVER RELEASE ON BLU-RAY FROM KINO.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing cinematic expression of class struggle July 16, 1999

By A Customer

Format:VHS Tape

Eisenstein captures extraordinarily the struggle between labor and capital, displaying brilliant cinematic innovation in the process. The factory workers are not individualized, with certain leaders representing the whole, but shown as a collective whole; both powerful and creative. The factory owner is not one particular boss, but a collage of multiple personalities, to express the impersonal nature of capital and the profit system. The film shows the organizing drive from early meetings of workers, to job actions, to the boss planting spies (innovatively shown both as humans and as devious animals), to the resulting strike and its conclusion. A raw, riveting film that set the stage for Eisenstein's later films, especially "Battleship Potemkin" and "October." A must see for those interested in the labor movement, cinematic and artistic brilliance, or the combination of the two.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Maximizing the Brilliant Moments September 26, 2011

By Joseph L. Ponessa

Format:Blu-ray|Amazon Verified Purchase

(THE) STRIKE was the first film made by Sergei Eisenstein. The film is a tragedy, ending in annihilation, and it does not seem to have a final resolution other than the ending title card "Remember!" That the crowned heads of Europe imposed a regime of repression upon their people for a whole century from the fall of Napoleon to the end of the First World War is a well documented fact, and so this film does not actually go over the top in portraying it. In fact, there is a lot of humor along the way, which is found off-putting by some reviewers. This humor probably belongs to a tentative strand of thinking that was going on in the Soviet film industry at the time. While STRIKE was in production, Protazanov's blend of whimsy and realism, the science fiction classic AELITA opened in Moscow, and the theater facade was decked with gigantic figures of the King and Queen of Mars. The crush of patrons was so great that the director himself was unable to get into the theater, and had to miss the premiere. This popular success seems to have frightened the Soviet authorities, and Protazanov was put on a leash, and Eisenstein himself never indulged in such antics as these again. Then there would be only the straight propagandistic melodrama of OCTOBER and MOTHER and so forth.
Of course, STRIKE is propaganda, too. Notably, we do not know the names of any single character until after he or she is dead. The worker who hangs himself leaves behind a suicide note, and only then do we find out his name. That is the trigger that launches the strike. At the end, after the massacre, a single title card appears with a bunch of first names. These two title cards cannot disguise the fact that we do not really have characters in this film, but archetypes--the manager, the stock holder, the strike leader, the spies (of a number of different kinds), etc.
The blu-ray is a magnificent presentation of the film. I cannot compare it with any of the several DVD releases, but I have a twenty-year old laserdisc from the boxed set on Soviet cinema, and the blu-ray transfer is much superior in every way (but one). The blu-ray shows more perimeter to the picture, and especially on the top side of the screen. That gives the film more headroom, and it really makes a difference in the full portrayal of the art of Eisenstein. Cut-off heads is one of my biggest gripes about silent film on home video. There is one magnificent take early in the film, projected in reverse, going from feet standing in a puddle, moving away, the puddle clears to show the reflections of smokestacks, then conspirators walk backwards into the reflection. When I was watching the cropped picture on the laserdisc I couldn't see clearly the technique that Eisenstein was using. It all became crystal clear while watching the blu-ray. Both picture and sound are excellent--the sound on the loud side, so I had to turn down my amp.
The laserdisc and blu-ray are produced from different prints, and they have damage in different places, mostly in the opening reel. These things might have been repaired, but do not detract greatly from the presentation.
I mentioned that there was one way I preferred the laserdisc, and that was in preserving the original Russian intertitles. While I do not read Russian, I find that having the original titles there helps remind me that we are, after all, watching a film from Russia. Also, in the case of this film, the titles interact with the film in a unique way. About two minutes into the film there is one title that playfully morphs into the following footage. That one original title was retained on the blu-ray, but all the others were replaced with oversized English titles. The original titles were medium sized, appropriate for the size of the screen. Use of the large type makes the film seem even more didactic and doctrinaire than it is. It certainly would have been possible to give us an option of Russian or English intertitles, as was done with the blu-ray release of Battleship Potemkin. Again, I say that something is lost when the original titles are entirely replaced, even when the new ones have high definition as in this case.
So, to document the film in its original release format, I am keeping the laserdisc. But I will be watching the blu-ray for the film itself. I think it is flat-footed at the end, but there are so many brilliant moments along the way that make the film rewarding to see again and again. The blu-ray maximizes those moments.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The auspicious film debut of director Sergei M. Eisenstein September 2, 2002

By Lawrance M. Bernabo HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:VHS Tape

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.