Strike [USSR 1924]

Стачка
Director: S. Eisenstein
Cinematographer: E. Tissé

This is the first I've seen of Eisenstein's early films, and it marks an incredible contrast with his later films with sound. While Aleksander Nevsky and Ivan Grozny are polished and their stylistic innovation subtle, Strike is rough, raw, and full of demanding visual composition and playful manoeuvres. I wonder whether the highly experimental character of this film is something of a reflection of the flowering of debate and experimentation in the USSR of the 1920s, and whether Eisenstein's later films perhaps became less experimental as society adopted its new conservatism.

What is most striking about this film is the montage of apparently cubist-inspired shots, making abundant use of multi-layered environments, almost textural but on a human rather than a micro scale. People jump in and out of barrels, run through jagged street corners etc and the raw and fast cutting of multiple camera angles of each scene lends to this feeling of multi-dimensionality. However it does not feel like pure formalism; the composition sets the tone of the film, which is to say we feel as if we are being carried along by the march of history, full of conflict, blood, and jagged edges, somehow greater than all of us.

As I have not seen very many silent films before, a thought occurred to me as I was listening to the soundtrack to the DVD version I watched, which was made in the 1990s. That is that silent films bear a close relationship to today's music videos; music videos are in some ways the modern continuation of silent films. In both, there is no room for sound effects or live dialogue, and the music and visuals are tightly interdependent. Of course with silent films the music would have been played to fit the film, while with music videos it is generally the reverse. But although there are some pretty bad music videos out there, it strikes me that the good ones are carrying on the tradition of tight formal connection between music and film, without the interruptions of sound effects and speech.

Nevertheless, even without music this film carries its own tone almost completely. It provides the viewer with a sea of visual metaphors including visuals that suggest sound, tactile sensation, etc. For this reason it is an interesting example of the way in which the film medium alone, without any sound, can convey a full sensory experience much like the written word, but perhaps more directly, or perhaps more subtlely.

Having only seen Eisenstein's later films before this, I did not really understand why he was thought of as such a great director. Now I think I see why.