Strike (1925)

Cautiously Recommended

Soviet Union

Feature Film

Original Title: Стачка

Director: Sergei Eisenstein

Writers: Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein, Ilya Kravchunovsky, Valeryan Pletnyov

Cinematographers: Vasili Khvatov, Vladimir Popov, Eduard Tisse

Composers: The Alloy Orchestra (1998)

Cast: Maksim Shtraukh, Grigori Aleksandrov, Mikhail Gomorov, I. Ivanov, Ivan Klyukvin, Aleksandr Antonov, Yudif Glizer

When a worker kills himself after being falsely accused of theft, his comrades go out on strike, demanding an eight-hour workday and a 30% wage increase; but the factory owners, with the aid of the police, violently quell the unrest, in Eisenstein’s formally playful and campily entertaining film, which is let down somewhat by its laughable depiction of the chin-stroking, baby-killing, and distinctly inhuman capitalists. Iain.Stott