Strike (Russian: Стачка, romanized: Stachka) is a 1925 Soviet silent propaganda film[1][2] directed and edited by Sergei Eisenstein.

Originating as one entry out of a proposed seven-part series titled "Towards Dictatorship of the Proletariat", Strike was a joint collaboration between the Proletcult Theatre and the film studio Goskino.

Arranged in six parts, the film depicts a strike in 1903 by the workers of a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia, and their subsequent suppression.

It is best known for a sequence towards the climax, in which the violent suppression of the strike is cross-cut with footage of cattle being slaughtered, and similar animal metaphors are used throughout the film to describe various individuals.

[3] Using typography, the word "но" (but) is added to the title of the chapter which then animates and dissolves into an image of machinery in motion.

At their meeting the shareholders use the demand letter as a rag to clean up a spill, and a lemon squeezer metaphorically[5] represents the pressure the stockholders intend to apply to the strikers.

A character is introduced, a "King of Thieves" whose throne is made of a derelict automobile amidst rubbish, and who leads a community that lives in enormous barrels buried with only their top openings above ground.

After a deal with a tsarist police agent, the "King" hires a few provocateurs from among his community to set fire, raze, and loot a liquor store.

[7] The cycle was to be a historical panorama focused on lessons learned by the Russian working class during the pre-revolutionary period, through political activities such as strikes and underground publications.

[7] Studio head Boris Mikhin introduced Eisenstein to cinematographer Eduard Tisse, who had started his career as a newsreel cameraman during the Civil War.

Actors and students from the studio filled other parts, and crowd scenes were populated by factory workers from Moscow.

[14] Only after Mikhin and Tisse personally guaranteed the film's completion was Eisenstein was given a third test shoot and allowed to continue with production.

During filming, he continued to quarrel with the studio over enormous demands, such as a thousand extras to form a mob in a scene from part five.

In some scenes, the aspect ratio is dynamic, with masks in front of the camera being added or removed to change the framing of a shot.

Early on, animal identities distinguish the police spies, and pushing goat in a wheelbarrow is equated to throwing out the factory manager.

[22] At the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, Eisenstein was awarded a gold medal for Strike.

[28] After the film's first British screening in 1956, Ivor Montagu noted the combination of realism and "fantastic clowning, remarking that, "there springs a lavish shower of fireworks: violations of every canon, experiments in method, such an abundance of trial runs as was never dreamed of in cinema before or seen since in a single work; diabolical and wavering changes of mood…everything in such overpowering quantity".

[20] In the New Statesman, David Sylvester likened its rhythmic editing to T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, writing that "it operates through…scattered images, each of them precisely concrete yet also symbolic, the juxtaposition of which startles and surprises.

[30] In a review for Les Temps modernes, Christian Zimmer described the film as "a memory of future fusillades".

[26] Geoff Andrew of Time Out called it Eisenstein's "most watchable" film, adding that "the harshly beautiful imagery…roots the movie effortlessly in down-to-earth reality, but its relentless energy and invention transform the whole thing into a raucous, rousing hymn to human dignity and courage.

[23] Its innovations were embraced by the Factory of the Eccentric Actor [ru] group, with director Grigori Kozintsev saying, "We must all see Strike again and again, until we can understand it and adopt its power for our own.

"[32] In the United States, Strike is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection.