Strike

Director: Sergei Eisenstein

1925 / 82min / 35mm

Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, released eight months after the premiere of Strike, his narrative debut, would go on to become the textbook representative of the ideological fervency and “anything goes” creative indulgence that made the cinema of the young Soviet Union stand apart and aside from that of the rest of the world. It takes nothing away from Potemkin to say that Strike, Eisenstein’s wild-eyed, hands-grasping-the-throat depiction of a work-stoppage in pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia, circa 1903, is the leaner, meaner, and altogether more unpredictable film. Its visualization of the unchecked abuses of Cossack bullies feels fresh; so, too, does its observation of a historically victimized people’s awakening communal consciousness: a slow-dawning recognizing of who their oppressors are and their decision to, at long last, give the bastards a taste of their own medicine. Eisenstein may have gone on to make greater films after Strike, but he never made another that struck quite the same ominous, ringing note of righteous indignation.

Distributor: Kino Lorber

Part of The Best of... 1925