Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Peacoffee
Feb 11, 2013


Yes this movie would have been much better as a MotM for May, but it’s too late now.



Strike! -1925

The movie can be watched here in HD, and there are I’m sure many other versions out there, including with different audio tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG_yM7We0C8

Wikipedia posted:

It was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, and he would go on to make The Battleship Potemkin later that year. It was acted by the Prolecult Theatre, and composed of six parts. It was in turn, intended to be one part of a seven-part series, entitled Towards Dictatorship (of the proletariat), that was left unfinished. Eisenstein's influential essay, Montage of Attractions was written between Strike's production and premiere.

quote:

The film depicts a strike in 1903 by the workers of a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia, and their subsequent suppression. The film is most famous for a sequence near the end in which the violent suppression of the strike is cross-cut with footage of cattle being slaughtered, although there are several other points in the movie where animals are used as metaphors for the conditions of various individuals. Another theme in the film is collectivism in opposition to individualism which was viewed as a convention of western film. Collective efforts and collectivization of characters are central to both Strike and Battleship Potemkin.
Content Warning: There is the slaughtering scenes of the cattle. There also includes some possible kicking at a kitten. As well as a scene where a group passes into a meeting spot marked by possibly real dead cats hanging from a tall post.

Hopefully I have mentioned all of the animal harm. They stood out to me more than they even normally would because of the film otherwise being really really good, I thought. Regarding those things being a part of a film ostensibly about the dignity of living things: I’ll make a *wide sweeping arm gesture* at the course of history in the northern hemisphere to answer whether I think cruelty to animals and to people are part of the same pattern of cruelty and abuse of power. Yes it’s almost a century old, yes it was a different time, yes the exact same option to *not do this* existed then as it does now, and had its advocates for it then, as it does now.

With the ducklings in the spring, or the parents sleeping in and taking time with their kids in the morning, the film captures something that the images of worker strikes as picketing events, cannot, and makes plain that the most real family values are labor rights.
The tenderness shown in those scenes is downright manipulative and inviting a vision of romance for these issues, and the vision of worker solidarity is largely the result of a homogeneous cultural group cooperating, but I think the momentary lifting of gravity shows how freeing the *process* of the strike is, rather than the principles of stopping work alone. The reclaiming of their time is powerful in its own symbolism, and has practical uses as well.

Well, those are my attempts at conveying my thoughts on the movie, take care this spring!

Peacoffee fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Mar 1, 2021

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



I'm looking forward to checking it out! This will be only my second Eisenstein after Battleship Potemkin, which I should probably revisit too.

TychoCelchuuu
Jan 2, 2012

This space for Rent.
It's been a long time since I last watched this but I've always liked it a lot. It does a great job communicating a grand sense of scale and importance.

Spatulater bro!
Aug 19, 2003

Punch! Punch! Punch!

List geeks like me will be happy to know this is on the They Shoot Pictures list. And I haven't seen it yet! So I'm stoked to check it out.

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



I'll be holding an impromptu stream of Strike tonight at 8pm EST on the CineD Discord, hope to see you all there :toot:

Peacoffee
Feb 11, 2013


TychoCelchuuu posted:

It's been a long time since I last watched this but I've always liked it a lot. It does a great job communicating a grand sense of scale and importance.

This is one of the things I liked about it as well, the small moments of the strike are held with such gravity, and it works so well for alternating between the power groups depicted.

Debbie Does Dagon
Jul 8, 2005



I was incredibly surprised by how dynamic, and fast paced the editing was. It could easily keep pace with a lot of modern action films in regards to creating and maintaining excitement. And that on top of being emotionally affecting, hilarious, and often utterly beautiful and mesmerising. I was incredibly impressed. My only issue was of course the animal cruelty, which, I understand why it was there historically and thematically, but I just don't think it's ever necessary.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Peacoffee
Feb 11, 2013


Debbie Does Dagon posted:

My only issue was of course the animal cruelty, which, I understand why it was there historically and thematically, but I just don't think it's ever necessary.

It’s really the piece that drags it down from being a straight up recommendation to something that needs tagging...and really there’s so much organizing energy involved in making such a beautiful movie...it almost feels like tragic symbolism to have it undermined by such a casually engrained disregard for life.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply