Strike

Strike (Stachka, 1925) is a Soviet silent film you can watch online on iFILM. Sergei Eisenstein's first feature, produced at the Proletkult studio, it follows factory workers in pre-revolutionary Russia pushed past the breaking point — a colleague's suicide after a false theft accusation triggers a full walkout. Cast includes Maxim Shtraukh, Grigori Alexandrov and Alexander Antonov.

The workers hold firm; the owners refuse to negotiate. Meanwhile, police agents and provocateurs work from inside the movement. What begins as collective action ends in something much grimmer — and Eisenstein films the suppression with a ferocity that would have been unthinkable in Western cinema of the era.

Eisenstein hadn't yet made Battleship Potemkin when he shot this, but the montage technique that would define his career is already running at full force — abrupt cuts, juxtaposed images designed to land like a physical blow, documentary footage spliced against staged scenes without warning. For anyone tracing where the film grammar of the twentieth century came from, Strike is the starting point. Stream Strike (1925) online on iFILM.