Based on the reportedly true story of brutally suppressed strikes in 1912, STRIKE begins when a micrometer is stolen from a factory and the man who reported it missing is accused by the management. When he kills himself, the workers begin go on strike. The workers demand an eight hour day, civil administration, a thirty-percent increase in wages, and a six hour workday for minors. The strike takes its toll on the families of the workers who starve and lose their homes, but the greedy capitalist stockholders (whose caricatures seem less and less exaggerated in recent years) want the resistance crushed (illustrated by one of the cigar-chomping fat cats squeezing the juice out of a lemon). The tsarist police make a deal with rabble-rouser King and his cronies to set some fires and loot a storefront as an excuse to bring the law down upon the striking workers. The governor sends for the military to intervene as well and a riot commences after a woman is killed trying to rescue her son from being trampled by the soldiers' horses. The ensuing action is even more brutal and shocking than the Odessa steps sequence of POTEMKIN. The feature debut of Sergei Eisenstein, STRIKE's perspective already depicts Eisenstein's mastering of film technique fully in evidence. Of course, the perspective is skewed towards propaganda by the communist government of the time, but it makes dramatic sense to make the workers the underdogs and to make the actions of the opposition sufficiently shocking to incite the audience. History is written by the victors, so while the film may be charged with bias, it is difficult to determine the level of accuracy (or inaccuracy); there is, however, no denying the sophistication of Eisenstein's technique and its employment.

Eisenstein's OCTOBER covers the Bolshevik overthrow of the Tsar, starting with the destruction of the Tsar's statue and ending with the storming of the Winter Palace on October 25, 1917. From tracking shots to feverish editing (including cuts juxtaposing the tsar with a peacock), all of Eisenstein's techniques are not only on display here, they are downright showy. A knowledge of the historical sequence of events would be handy for viewing the film since the narrative is more of a visual assault of a highlights reel than a history lesson (despite some thrilling sequences, it was not that well received by the public at the time of release). Heavily censored by Stalin (co-director Grigori Aleksandrov claims a loss of nearly 3000 feet of film - mainly sequences involving Trotsky) and not restored until the 1967 sound version represented here - and in seemingly all other copies - this apparently complete version is more of a showcase of Eisenstein's technique than the marriages of technique and complex narrative seen in Eisenstein's non-commissioned works.