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Strike (1925): In 1922, Lenin also had said that, "...of all of the arts, for us the cinema was the most important." In 1924, the Proletkult offered Eisenstein, then 26 years of age, the job of directing the first of eight episodes in the film series 'Towards the Dictatorship'.
This brilliant and complex re-creation of the development of a 1912 factory strike in Tsarist Russia, and its savage destruction by agents provocateurs, police and mounted troops, was an ideal vehicle for the youthful Eisenstein to express his desire to reflect the dialectic of the Russian revolution in the most comprehensive of art forms. Eisenstein had been developing the Kuloshov's 'montage' effect in editing and in this, his first film, he uses it with tremendous skill to enhance symbolism and achieve highly charged emotional responses to the strength, energy and heroism of the working classes and the tragic events depicted.
Strike is a truly visual and technical masterpiece which is, at times, overwhelming in its powerful portrayal of these events in history. Strike was the only film ever made in the series and it changed the direction of the soviet cinema for many decades to come.
DVD FEATURESOriginal Fullframe VersionNewly conceived score by Ed Hughes (DTS, 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo Options)English Intertitles
Battleship Potemkin (1925): Planned by the Soviet Central Committee to coincide with the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful 1905 Russian Revolution, this film was developed by the 27 year-old Sergei Eisenstein from less than one page of script from a planned eight-part epic that was intended to chronicle a large number of revolutionary actions.
Starting with the Potemkin's crew's refusal to eat maggot-infested meat, the mutiny develops and their leader Vakulinchuk is shot by a senior officer. The officers are overthrown and when the Potemkin docks at Odessa, crowds appear from all directions to take up the cause of the dead sailor and open rebellion ensues. What became the Czarist soldiers fire on the crowds thronging down the Odessa steps: the broad newsreel-like sequences being inter-cut with close-ups of harrowing details.
Returning to sea, the Potemkin's crew prepares the guns for action as the ship, flying the flag of freedom, steams to confront the squadron. When they finally meet theirs worst fears are allayed as, with relief coupled with joy, they are universally acclaimed.
This film, which was destined to become such an influential landmark in cinematographic history, opened in Moscow in January 1926. It ran for only four weeks.
DVD FEATURESOriginal Fullframe VersionNewly conceived score by Ed Hughes (DTS, 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo Options)Russian IntertitlesOptional English subtitles
Behind the Scenes at the Recording Sessions
Battleship Potemkin with Nikolai Kryukov Score (Russian Intertitles with English subtitles)
October (1927): Commissioned by the October Revolution Jubilee Committee (Chairman, Nikolai Podvolsky) for the tenth anniversary of the revolution, Sergei Eisenstein's third major feature film "October 1917" is a marvelous reconstruction of the events from February leading up to the revolution and the Bolshevik's overthrow of the czarists and Kerensky's provisional government in 1917. True to the communist philosophy, there were no main characters; the proletariat providing the 'heroic' star quality throughout. The ultimate victory belonging to the revolution.
Eisenstein's skill and experimentation in using fast moving and rhythmic montage to produce telling metaphors, and build and intensify sequences, was not fully understood by the early Russian audiences; typical examples being the rapidly alternating images employed to create a machine-gun firing and the cross-cutting between power-hungry Kerensky and the statue of Napoleon.
Outstanding for the period are the dynamic sequences illustrating the massacre in the vicinity of the St Petersburg bridges and the storming of the Winter Palace which feature a profusion of exciting cinematic techniques.
DVD FEATURESOriginal Fullframe VersionOriginal Dmitri Shostakovich Score (2.0 Mono)Russian IntertitlesEnglish subtitlesBattleship Potemkin with Edmund Meisel Score (Russian Intertitles with English subtitles) |
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