Stachka [Strike] (1925)

(Criterion Streaming, December 2022) Despite the rougher technical qualities of his films, I usually find Sergei Eisenstein more interesting than Tarkovsky in the grand pantheon of Russian filmmakers. Tarkovsky is incredibly dull even when he plays with interesting ideas, while Eisenstein feels like a giddy kid just trying stuff in the new cinema toolbox and does all of that in the service of a vigorous moral/political agenda. In Strike, we go deep into the making of a labour action in pre-Revolutionary Russia, from the initial spark to the way the strike is violently put down. This being Eisenstein’s first feature-length film, it’s rough. But you can already see the fundamentals of his “montage of attractions,” the overt use of cinematic metaphors (intercutting animal footage to heighten emotional reactions, for instance) and an aggressive approach to its ideological intentions. As you can expect, the film is deeply sympathetic to the strikers and not at all toward management—but don’t necessarily expect a happy ending. Few movies of the 1920s are as visually interesting as Strike, and few as engaged either. It all makes for a piece of essential early cinema—interesting even today, even without sound, even with the limited means at its disposal.