Monday, November 28, 2005
Strike! (1924)
With shame I admit that I'd never seen this film in its entirety before, and still only saw it on one of those Kino VHS tapes manufacted over a decade ago. Nevertheless I really admired this one, largely for the ingenuity of its strung-along images: the montage isn't only pounding proletariat-versus-capitalist messages (though that, of course, too), it's constantly productive of exciting graphic compositions--lines and curves, contrasts, fierce imagistic switches in each cut. Eisenstein does here in a somewhat comic, maximalist mode what Dovzhenko does lyrically in Arsenal.
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2 comments:
I *love* STRIKE and I credit it for helping to wear away some personality conflict I have with Eisenstein's cinema. (I have seen POTEMKIN at least five or six times but I can't seem to make it work for me. Although recently I had a more positive 2nd viewing of NEVSKY, which I initially disliked very much.)
It is a 'bitchun flick,' in Bill Krohn's words. I've seen Potemkin twice and like it, but not as much as this. Nevsky is pretty cool, I think, but definitely plays away from a lot of Eisenstein's strengths.
Next up -- finally see October!
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