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1920s
STACHKA (1924)
STRIKE
U.S.S.R. (Goskino, Proletkult) 82m Silent BW
Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein
Producer: Boris Mikhin
Screenplay: Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein
Photography: Vasili Khvatov, Vladimir Popov, Eduard Tisse
Cast: Grigori Aleksandrov, Aleksandr Antonov, Yudif Glizer, Mikhail Gomorov, I. Ivanov, Ivan Klyukvin, Anatoli Kuznetsov, M. Mamin, Maksim Shtraukh, Vladimir Uralsky, Vera Yanukova, Boris Yurtsev
Sergei M. Eisenstein was a revolutionary in every sense, forging a radically new breed of montage-based cinema from an unprecedented merger of Marxist philosophy, Constructivist aesthetics, and his own fascination with the visual contrasts, conflicts, and contradictions built into the dynamics of film itself.
Strike, his first feature, was intended as one installment in a series of works about the rise of Marxist-Leninist rule. Censorship by the new Soviet government thwarted many of Eisensteins dreams in ensuing years, and this series never got beyond its initial production. Nonetheless, the feverishly energetic Strike stands on its own as a tour de force of expressive propaganda and the laboratory in which seminal ideas for his later silent masterpiecesThe Battleship Potemkin (1925), October (1927), and Old and New (1928)were first tested and refined.
Strike depicts a labor uprising in a Russian factory, where workers are goaded toward rebellion by the owners greed and dishonesty. We see simmering unrest among the laborers, an act of treachery that pushes them into action, the excitement of their mutiny followed by the hardships of prolonged unemployment, and finally the counterstrike of the factory owners, abetted by troops who engage in wholesale slaughter of the workers. The film ends with an electrifying example of what Eisenstein called intellectual montage, intercutting the massacre of strikers with images of animals being slain in a slaughterhouse.
The acting in Strike is as unconventional as its editing techniques, mixing naturalistic portrayals of the workers with stylized portrayals of the owners and their spies. The film
illustrates Soviet theories of typage, calling for actors who physically resemble the character types they play, and the collective hero, whereby a storys protagonist is not a single individual but rather all the people standing on the correct side of history.
The political imperatives of Strike have dated since its premiere in 1925, but its visual power has not waned. I dont believe in the kino-eye, Eisenstein once remarked, referring to a catchword of Dziga Vertov, his colleague and rival. I believe in the kino-fist. That hard-hitting philosophy galvanizes every sequence of this unique film. DS
See all movies from the 1920s
1920s
GREED (1924)
U.S. (MGM) 140m Silent BW
Director: Erich von Stroheim
Producer: Louis B. Mayer
Screenplay: Joseph Farnham, June Mathis, from the novel McTeague by Frank Norris
Photography: William H. Daniels, Ben F. Reynolds
Cast: Zasu Pitts, Gibson Gowland, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Tempe Pigott, Sylvia Ashton, Chester Conklin, Frank Hayes, Joan Standing
The first movie ever shot entirely on location, Greed is notorious as much for the story behind its making as for its considerable artistic power. Director Erich von Stroheim wanted to make the most realistic movie possible with his adaptation of Frank Norriss novel McTeague, about the rise and violently murderous fall of working-class San Francisco dentist John Mac McTeague. But his creation, originally commissioned by the director-friendly Goldwyn Company, was destroyed when the studio became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), with von Stroheims nemesis Irving Thalberg as the new General Manager.
MGM wanted a commercial film, and von Stroheim wanted to create an experiment in cinematic realism worthy of the 1990s Dogme school. During the two-year shoot, he rented an apartment on Laguna Street in San Francisco that became the set for Macs (Gibson Gowland) dental parlors. Many of the scenes there were shot entirely with natural light. Von Stroheim also insisted that his actors live in the apartment to help them get into character. One of the fascinations in watching Greed is seeing all the historic San Francisco locations as they were in the early 1920s. When it came time to shoot the films final climactic moments in Death Valley, von Stroheim shipped his whole crew out to the 120°F desert location, where the cameras became so overheated they had to be wrapped with iced towels.
The directors first cut was nearly nine hours long. It was a painstaking reenactment of Norriss novel, which itself was a re-creation of an actual crime that took place during the early 1880s. After a quack doctor helps Mac escape the Northern California mining town of his childhood, he becomes a dentist in San Francisco. There he meets Trina (Zasu Pitts), with whom he falls in love during a memorably creepy tooth-drilling scene. His best friend and rival for Trinas affections is Marcus (Jean Hersholt), who grants Mac permission to marry Trina but changes his mind after she wins a lottery. Using his connections in local government, Marcus manages to put Mac out of business and send his former friend into a free fall of back-breaking day labor, drunkenness, and wife beating.
Trina turns to her lottery winnings as a source of satisfaction, hoarding her thousands in gold coins while she and Mac starve. One of Greeds most famous scenes has Trina climbing into bed with her money, caressing it, and rolling around with erotic abandon. Shortly thereafter Mac murders her, steals the money, and heads out to Death Valley where his life comes to a bitter end when Marcus hunts him down.
Only a small handful of people ever saw the original nine-hour version of Greed. After von Stroheims friend helped him cut the picture down to eighteen reels, or about four hours, the studios took it away from him and handed it over to a low-ranking editor who reduced it to 140 minutes. This version of the film, which von Stroheim called a mutilation of my sincere work at the hands of the MGM executives, is nevertheless stark, captivating, and genuinely disturbing.