Strike montage

Strike is a political drama about the factory workers in Russia, set just before the 1905 Bolshevik Revolution, When a worker is accused of stealing some machinery from the factory he works in, he then later commits suicide and the other people he works with  revolt against the Czarist regime who are controlling the factory and the workers. The strike carries on and the Czarist regime becomes more and more impatient so they stop the Strike using force. 

Eisenstein was one of the first to study at USSR which was the first film school and it was known as the Moscow film academy. At the USSR academy students weren’t able to make there own film because it was too expensive to import into Russia so they used old films and cut them into different orders to practice editing and this is how Eisenstein learnt how to edit film and how Strike was such a well made film.

Eisenstein uses Montage to show different events in the strike which are happening at the same time in the village. This technique has a staccato effect which isn’t aesthetically pleasing for the viewer therefor creating tension. Sergie said that his montage theory of collision suggesting individual shots are used as fragments of a whole scene rather than in collision with each other. He used two very different shots which were unrelated individually but when put side by side meant something very different and gave them a sense of meaning. For example in the slaughter scene of “Strike” there are shots of the factory workers running down a hill to get away from the Czarist regime and then there is a shot of a man slaughtering a cow, although this shot is irrelevant on its own, when put next to the shot of the workers it symbolizes; death, destruction, murder and much, much more.

 

Soviet montage went on to be extremely influential in cinema, for example here are some films that soviet montage is used in

 (Rocky training montage)

The training montage in rocky shows rocky training compared with Drago and how opposite there training techniques are. The montage emphasizes how different the two boxers are, the audience are shown this because the shots of Drago and rocky are side by side showing their differences.

 (Carl and Ellie’s relationship montage)

The montage in “Up” shows the audience how Carl and Ellie grow up together and shows there relationship at its happiest like their marriage and at its saddest like when Ellie has a miscarriage and then later dies and that’s when the montage comes to an end. The montage is used to sum up Carl’s life without taking up too much time of the film but adding some context.