![]() As most of these characters are nominated as animals, Eisenstein here quite directly establishes his use of montage as visual metaphor by displaying a shot of an animal immediately followed by the corresponding laborer/striker (i.e., and owl followed by “The Owl” mimicking an owl movement). The film’s first episode introduces the viewer to a band of would-be revolutionary laborers by their signifying nicknames. Strike is perhaps the most accessible of Eisenstein’s silent work, as it eases the spectator into what would become the filmmaker’s signature employment of collective storytelling and collision montage. When considering that 80% of the Russian people at this time were illiterate, it makes sense that Eisenstein attempted to convey political messages through a strictly and singularly visual language. Eisenstein’s application of this technique often draws forth abstract metaphors that violate what we think of as conventional time-space boundaries in cinematic storytelling: images of foreign objects or incidents come out of seemingly nowhere not to contribute to a stable and cohesive narrative, but to illustrate an idea being purported by the filmmaker. While vast and frenetic, Strike is never chaotic, and manages to depict the proletarian campaign with incredible detail across its six episodes.īut Eisenstein’s major contribution to cinema in the silent era is no doubt his implementation of collision montage, or his theory that cinema never speaks through a single image, but the juxtaposition of several (like a word versus a sentence). Eisenstein’s films are far from conventional narratives and thus can be difficult to follow, but rarely is state-sponsored filmmaking thus unique and artistically ambitious. Rather than follow an individual protagonist through a series of events, Strike instead provides a cast of hundreds, giving us a labyrinthine mosaic of all factors involved in the motivation for the strike, the struggle to enact the strike, and the violence that follows. This approach reinforces the proletarian values of organization and fighting for the good of the many, but it also provides an audaciously original means of storytelling. In an effort to establish a uniquely non-Western form of cinematic expression, Eisenstein’s films are told through collective rather than individual experience. It’s a beautiful work of art manifested through an expertly crafted narrative, a film that exhibits an incredible understanding of cinema’s unique visual language. However, Eisenstein’s work is far more than government-sponsored propaganda. Taking place in 1903, the film serves as a demonstration of proletarian sacrifice. ![]() The film, as its title implies, concerns the organization of a massive strike at a large factory led by a group of insurgent laborers, and portrays the tensions, hardships, and ultimately tragedy endured by the strikers at the hands of the controlling class and the strong arm of the Russian government. Like his later (and more famous) Battleship Potemkin (also 1925) and (to an extent) October (1928), Strike takes place in the final days of the Tsarist era before the Bolshevik-led revolution and the establishment of a Communist Russia that Eisenstein did most of his life’s work in. The FilmĮisenstein’s silent cinema is perhaps best characterized by three connective traits: portraying pre-revolutionary history, collective storytelling, and collision montage. Strike is essential viewing for anybody who is seriously invested in the evolution, history and potential aesthetic and political power of cinema, and this new DVD and Blu-ray version is likely the best viewing experience available. Thus, a high definition release of one of his central works is understandably something of an event, and the good people at Kino have packaged a pristine new reissue of Eisenstein’s debut feature film Strike(1925) from its restoration by Cinematheque de Toulouse. ![]() A philosopher of cinema, Eisenstein did not invent montage, but certainly explored the vast parameters of its possibilities without precedent. ![]() Legendary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein is one of the most influential creative minds in the history of the medium.
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