Sergei Eisenstein's first film is, without doubt, one of the most astonishing debuts in film history. His introduction of dialectical montage--which included then-innovative shock cuts to such violent images as a raised club, a bloody face, and a bull's throat being cut--both disturbed and galvanized contemporary audiences. Combined with the expressionistic compositional style Eisenstein had absorbed from French and German films, it established its director as a new force in world cinema. Commissioned by the government to commemorate the first, failed Bolshevik revolution, the film covers a 1912 strike at a metalworks factory whose workers have been bullied and humiliated by the plant management. When a fired worker commits suicide, the workers organize a peaceful strike. But the plant bosses make use of agents provocateurs and eventually bring in the czar's troops, who crack down on the strikers with maximum brutality. Aside from his editing innovations, Eisenstein pioneered the concept of the collective group as a character, influenced by the example of the newly formed Soviet Union, as well as the Constructivist art of the period.

This silent film features an orchestral score.

The film marked the feature-film directing debut of Sergei Eisenstein.

Eisenstein borrowed many of the actors from his Proletkult theater troupe.

Among the many directors to pay homage directly to Eisenstein's shock-cut technique was Francis Ford Coppola near the end of APOCALYPSE NOW.

DVD Features:

Region 0
Full Frame - 1.33
Single Side - Single Layer
Audio:
Dolby Digital Stereo - English
Additional Release Material:
Audio Commentary
Interactive Features:
Interactive Menus
Scene Access

Distributor Notes: Sergei Eisenstein's "Strike," with Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," mark the most outstanding cinematic debuts in the history of film. Triggered by the suicide of a worker unjustly accused of theft, a strike is called by the laborers of a Moscow factory. The managers, owner and the Czarist government dispatch infiltrators in an attempt to break the workers unity. Unsuccessful, they hire the police and, in the film's most harrowing and powerful sequences, the unarmed strikers are slaughtered in a brutal confrontation. This edition of "Strike" is digitally remastered from a mint-condition 35mm print made from the original camera negative and features new digital stereo music composed and performed by the Alloy Orchestra.

Source: Image Entertainment, Inc.

Grigori Alexandrov: Russian Director
Alexander Antonov: 

Sergei Eisenstein: Russian Director/Theorist