Strike (1925) | Directed by Sergei Eisenstein - Full Movie

A group of oppressed factory workers go on strike in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Strike (Russian: Стачка, translit. Stachka) is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein. 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 Proletcult 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.

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.

Directed by: Sergei Eisenstein
Written by: Grigori Aleksandrov, Ilya Kravchunovsky, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Valerian Pletnev
Produced by: Boris Mikhin
Starring: Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Maksim Shtraukh, Mikhail Gomorov
Cinematography: Eduard Tisse, Vladimir Popov, Vasili Khvatov
Edited by: Sergei M. Eisenstein
Production company: 1st Goskino Factory
Distributed by: Goskino
Release date: 28 April 1925
Running time: 82 minutes
Country: Soviet Union
Languages: Silent film, Russian intertitles