Strike (1925, dir. Serge Eisenstein) was a silent film, and Eisenstein’s first feature length film. It was made during the rise of the Soviet Union, and features different Soviet montage techniques, which were used by Eisenstein to tell the worker’s story. Eisenstein’s innovative editing and montage techniques are inspired from when he was at VGIK, a film school in Moscow. At this time, there was very little raw film stock in Russia, so new films couldn’t be made. Instead, people focused on studying films. They would cut up existing film reels and find out what different effects were created by editing scenes together in certain ways. This led Eisenstein to come up with his five methods of montage: rhythmic, metric, tonal, over-tonal and the intellectual method.

One use of method of montage used was metric editing, where the lengths of shots create the tempo of the scene. This is used near the beginning of the film, where the strike is being organised.

Here, the shot quickly cuts between the faces of the different workers in the factory. Each shot lasts around a second, which isn’t a long time for the audience to process what they’re being shown. The quickly cut shots increase the tempo of the scene, which adds a sense of panic and mayhem to the action. It helps the audience to understand what is going on, as it makes them understand the danger and the urgency that the workers are feeling.

Strike also uses the intellectual method of editing in a number of scenes. For example, when the agents are introduced, the scene cuts from pictures of animals to pictures of their faces, showing their code names. This clearly shows the audience which character is which, and emphasises how their personalities reflect the animals that they are named after.

Here, the shot changes from an image of an owl to the character of The Owl. His actions, for example rubbing his eyes and blinking a lot, are similar to what people would expect to see an owl doing. The shots fade together, making to comparison between the two obvious for the audience.

Another example of intellectual editing is near the end of the film, where the attack on the workers is shown alongside the slaughtering of a cow.

These two unrelated images create a sense that the workers are being massacred, and that they are innocent compared to the cruel and powerful soldiers. It helps the audience sympathise with the people, as the horrific image of the cow isn’t what audiences would have expected to see during the film. It also shows the relentless brutality of the soldiers, and how the workers are treated as though they are just cattle.

Eisenstein’s montage techniques has influenced many aspects of modern day cinema. For example, the series of Rocky films each feature a ‘training montage’, which are clearly inspired by Soviet montage techniques. Music videos are also based on Eisenstein’s idea of rhythmic montage, as shots tend to cut in time to the music playing.