The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- With Serge
Eisenstein’s “Strike” (1925) In Mind
DVD Review
By Political Commentator Frank Jackman
Strike, starring a cast of hundreds of
working people and others, directed by Serge Eisenstein, 1925
No question, no question at all that
some political films whether they were intended as propaganda for a certain
viewpoint as with the film under review, Russian mad man filmmaker Serge
Eisenstein’s 1925 classic Strike, or because as the story line
developed everybody was compelled to think through the implications of the
cover-up and preclude to coup in a film like Costa-Garvas’ Z remain in our consciousness
long after mere entertainment films have faded from view. Here is the beauty of
Eisenstein’s work whether with Strike
or in an effort like Potemkin, the
one with the famous baby carriage scene on the Odessa Steps. The medium is the
message to steal a phrase from an old-time social media commentator like
Marshall McLuhan. The whole thing is done, powerfully done, with nothing but
absolutely stunning cinematography, a few signboards (in Russian with English
subtitles), and some very interesting and varied mood music which if I am not
mistaken included some jazz theme stuff from Duke Ellington, and if not him
then definitely some jazz riffs along with that inevitable classical music that
one would have expected from a Russian filmmaker who grabbed what he could from
the Russian Five.
Now the question of who a film is
directed at is usually pretty much just to lure in general audiences, maybe if
it is cartoonish then kids but usually general audiences. Eisenstein in this
film though is directing his efforts to working people in order for them to
draw some important lessons about the class struggle. Of course Eisenstein was
working shortly after the October Revolution of 1917 in his country and so he
probably was more or less committed to this type of film in the interests of
the Soviet government and of the world revolution that was still formally what
the Bolsheviks and their international allies were all about. (I might add
though that a later film about Ivan the Terrible had the same fine cinematic
qualities and that was not particularly directed at the world’s working classes
but to ancient Russian patriotic fervor as the smell of war, war on the doorstep
became apparent.) That drawing of lessons about what happened during the strike
is the force that drives the film.
Here is how this one played out in all
its glory and infamy. The workers at a Russian factory of unknown location and
for that matter of unknown production had been beaten down by the greedy
capitalists and stockholders, had had no say in what they made and how much
dough they made. (The scenes with the greedy capitalists are a treasure,
something out of any leftist’s caricature of the old time robber barons
complete with fat bellies, cigars and top hats). Like any situation where
tensions are strung out to the limit it did not take a lot to produce a reason
for a strike for a better shake in this wicked old world. Here it was an honest
workman’s being accused of a theft which he couldn’t defend himself against and
so in shame he committed suicide. After have previously spent several weeks
talking about taking an action to better their conditions the leaders of the
underground “strike committee” decided to have everybody “down tools.” (The
scene of this action with a rolling shutdown as section after section left
their benches was breathtaking.)
Of course in turn of the century (20th
century) Russia (and elsewhere) the capitalists were as vicious as one would
expect of a new class of exploiters dealing here with people, men and women,
just off the farm and so in no mood to grant such things as an eight-hour day
(a struggle that we in America are very familiar with from the Haymarket
Martyrs whose chief demand a couple of decades before the time of this film was
for that same eight hour day) and a big wage increase. So the committee of
capitalists and their hangers-on gave a blanket “no.” Said the hell with you to
the strikers.
The aftermath of this refusal is where
the real lessons of this film are to drawn. Needless to say the capitalists
were willing, more than willing to starve the workers into submission (the
scenes of some workers pawning off their worldly possession for food for the
kids, for themselves are quite moving).But not only were they willing to starve
the mass of workers back to the factory but did everything in their power to
break the strike by other means. First and foremost to send spies out to stir
up trouble in order to get the class unity broken, then tried to get some
weak-links to betray the movement from within, and if that didn’t work then try
might and main to round up by any way possible the leaders of the strike in
order to behead the movement. In the end though they were not above using their
“Pharaohs,” their mounted cops and troops to suppress the whole thing. In the
final scene after the cops and troops have done their murderous assaults on
unarmed strikers the corpses spread out widely on the massacre field tell
anybody who wasn’t sure about the role of the cops and troops in preserving the
social order of the rulers all they need to know about the way the strike was
defeated.
From what I could gather from the last
signboard (one which mentioned the Lena gold strike which was I believe was
suppressed in 1912) the time period of this strike was between the 1905
revolution that went down in flames and the victorious revolution in 1917. The
implications of the failure of the strike, of the need to take the state power,
were thus through Eisenstein’s big lenses there for all to see. Hey, even if
you don’t draw any political conclusions from this film just watch to see what
they mean they say a picture sometimes is worth a thousand words. Eisenstein
has a thousand such pictures that will fascinate and repel you.
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