Strike

Saw Strike, a communist propaganda film by the ever-effective Sergei Eisenstein. This one follows a strike at a factory of some kind. It's not really clear what the workers are unhappy about until their demands are read out (and roundly guffawed at by a quartet of fat plutocrats) mid-way through the film. It turns out to be eminently reasonable 8-hour days, and a perhaps-less-reasonable 30% increase in wages (not being snide, I just don't know economics.) Anyway, this is ignored by the plutocrats and they counter by wakening their capitalist sleeper-agents, known by colorful code names such as "the king," "the monkey," "the owl" and so forth. These agents are the comic relief. They bumble and grimace at the camera, always completely (prat-)falling for the attractive workers' traps.

Anyway, you can imagine how the film goes. It's aim is to rabble-rouse, so the workers, despite being obviously nobler, smarter, and more attractive than their foes, somehow begin to suffer terribly in the third act, when our sympathies are played on. Eisenstein as usual conducts an awesome crowd scene. He's more of a choreographer than a director, I feel. He relies entirely on crowd scenes and flashing montages. We don't even know the characters well enough to know their names, let alone judge their reactions. That said, the crowd scenes are great. Not as strong as the Odessa Steps scene in Battleship Potemkin, but the strike breaking scenes are quite stirring enough.

An interesting film, a bit too cartoonish for me (especially the business with the sleeper agents. That's just ridiculousness on top of ridiculousness) but entertaining. Also it contains a fair number of attractive Russian guys, which is nice, and a scene where one of the workers is seduced into becoming an agent of the factory-owners that features midgets dancing on a caviar-laden table. I don't think I would have seen that in any other film.

Also, bonus, the whole thing is on youtube, which is how I saw it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLiNKaUp0AA