1912, and in a Russian factory unrest is brewing amongst the workers who have to endure harsh conditions and criminally long hours if they want to take home their pay, and even that is of a meagre amount. To ensure there is no uprising, the bosses infiltrate the workers with spies, all to be certain that the authorities know exactly what is in the minds of their employees. But when one of the workers is framed for stealing from the factory and subsequently commits suicide by hanging himself from the machinery, there's no holding back the proletariat's rage...
For his first feature length film, co-writer and director Sergei Eisenstein tackled a subject he would return throughout his career, propaganda for the Soviet regime. The events he depicted here were recent history, before the revolution but going some way to explaining it for the masses who would be going to watch his production. The hero against the Czarists and bosses was not a fine upstanding member of the community, it was the entire community itself, each one of the masses had his or her part to play.
Eisenstein patently had little use for subtlety, as you can see in the portrayal of the ruling classes. To a man they're fat cats, puffing on cigars and imbibing expensive alcohol, devious and completely lacking in any sympathetic qualities, with the police chief, who has an equally wide girth, part of the oppression as well. Not a single shot is wasted, from the grotesque closeups of the spies, each with their own codename ("The Monkey", The Owl", "The Fox") to the stirring scenes of the workers marching for their rights.
Naturally, when the proles decide to strike and lay out their demands for an eight hour day and a thirty percent pay increase, their bosses reject them out of hand. If the plight of the workers is regarded as noble, it is also not presented as the easy option as children go hungry and state-instigated violence erupts frequently. There's a certain paranoia about the intrigue of the spies, who can be anywhere at any one time, listening in and reporting back to their superiors.
And there's a lot about Strike, or Stachka as it was orginally known, that is striking as visually Eisenstein's masterful use of his montage techniques hammers his points home with efficiency. Arresting images abound, such as the hoodlums emerging from their barrels, the photographs of the spies coming to life, or the climactic clamping down of the industrial action by the police, leaving many dead intercut with cattle being slaughtered. Ironically for a silent film, it can all become a bit like being shouted at for an hour and a half, but there's no denying the director's pioneering talents to bring his political concerns to life.
[Tartan's Region 2 DVD is part of a three disc set along with Eisenstein's October and Battleship Potemkin.]
