Product Details

• Actors: Grigori Aleksandrov, Maksim Shtraukh, Mikhail Gomorov, I. Ivanov, Ivan Klyukvin
• Directors: Sergei M. Eisenstein
• Writers: Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Ilya Kravchunovsky, Valeryan Pletnyov
• Producers: Boris Mikhin
• Format: Black & White, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Kino Video
• VHS Release Date: June 27, 2000
• Run Time: 82 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305381224
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #304,165 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

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

Customer Reviews

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

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.

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 (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strike [VHS] (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.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating example of the early work of a master film-maker, October 31, 2001

By 

D. M. Farmbrough "Dave Farmbrough" (Wisconsin, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strike [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The most noticeable thing about this film is the extremely fast editing. This is fast compared with modern films, but by its contemporaries, it's lightning fast. Eisenstein advocated what he called 'montage', meaning more the juxtaposition of two different or similar images by intercutting or fading between the two to allow the viewer to draw comparisons between the two images. This is sometimes subtle, and at other times blunt (such as the scene with the crowd being slaughtered being intercut with cattle being slaughtered). Nevertheless it allows Eisenstein to make a point that we are treating humans as cattle and also avoids visceral depiction of the killing of the humans, whilst giving us a shocking image that tells us what we need to know. The film is somewhat difficult to follow, even with subtitles, and I felt there were no real points of identification. The humour in the depiction of the Bourgeoisie lightened the tone in places, but the film still seems more like a political manifesto for the Bolsheviks than representation of reality. Years ahead of its time technically, but dated in content.