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Strike (1925): The Soviet Film That Came Before the Iconic “Battleship Potemkin”
Before there was the classic Battleship Potemkin (1925), Sergei Eisenstein created his first full feature-length film — none other than the 1925 film Strike. As predecessor to Battleship Potemkin, Strike perhaps set the stage for Eisenstein’s use of Montage editing, a sought-after style in the Soviet film industry of the 1920s, and particularly of a device called the nondiegetic insert.
According to Film History: An Introduction, a nondiegetic insert “consists of one or more shots depicting space and time unrelated to those of the story events in the film”, so as to create unusual spatial relationships and conflict.
In Strike, Eisenstein creates meaningful symbolism by attempting to correlate the images of two elements that hold no temporal, causal or special relationship to each other — that of the slaughter of the bull and the workers. However, the juxtaposition of these images expresses the idea that the workers suffer a fate and treatment that could be likened to the ruthless slaughter of animals. Nondiegetic inserts formed the very crux of Eisenstein’s “intellectual montage” theory, and so animals were a constant means of comparison to depict the inhumane treatment of the proletariat throughout the film. Hence, the technique of Montage proved vital in depicting class struggles in a visceral sense through several instances of Strike.
In terms of narrative style, Strike utilizes multiple conventions of its time to build tension whilst making intense social commentary. Instead of individualizing characters, several Soviet Montage films draw on a Marxist view of history to often make social forces the source of causes and their effects which is reflected in Strike by the fact that there is no main character of protagonist, which also happens to go against the notion of having a central character in Social Realism.
Strike uses techniques of Montage, particularly the nondiegetic insert as well as unconventional characterization within its narrative structure, such as replacing a main protagonist with a more representative, collective sense of identity in a group of indistinguishable characters to express notions of class divide and unjust treatment of certain social groups.
