20: Strike

Stachka

USSR  90m  Dir: Sergei Eisenstein

Original Screenplay

Strike is a film that somehow does exactly what the title suggests yet is unlike anything I've seen before. 

The plot is fairly simplistic- unhappy with their low pay and long hours, a group of factory workers in 1903 (pre revolution) go on strike and the rich board members refuse to budge even a little to their demands. 

Unusually, the film barely has characters in it and certainly doesn't have a figure you could call a protagonist. Instead the entire striking workforce unite as the heroes of the film. The actors give realistic portrayals whilst the board members are highly stylized and more like satire cartoons. 

Throughout the film the works are compared visually with animals and this theme culminates in a montage of the violent suppression of the workers intercut with footage of cattle being slaughtered. It's a really powerful sequence which really effectively portrays the idea that the workers are treated like animals. 

I was interested in the politics of the film. It depicts an insurrection amongst the working classes just over ten years before the Russian Revolution. In shows the level of strong feeling amongst the working classes at the time that led to the revolution and is very anti-capitalist in the way it shows the factory bosses. Unlike Western cinema which focused on individuals this is all about the collective which feels like a very USSR-era message. It's fascinating to see a film from the early days of the USSR which feels so different to the cinema the West was producing at the same time. 

Not a particularly exciting film to watch but fascinating as a piece of history.